Years of Diverging Waters
by thofheinz
Summary: A unified series of short stories comprising something like a novella: "Negotiation", "What You Can't Give Back", and "The Long Drive." Taken together, they explore the difficult time Taichi, Chihaya, and Arata face in dealing with the legacies of youth at ages 25-30. Heavily dramatic, quite a bit of humor and a little romance.


YEARS OF DIVERGING WATERS

1\. NEGOTIATION

One day in late January, Hanano Sumire walked along the beach of Fujisawa City. Late afternoon deepened and slanted shadows. Sunset painted the lit surfaces of the city orange. Soon, the Enoshima Candle would light up behind her. In her 24 years, she had never been here before. She liked it. A conference had brought her here; one more day remained. Tonight was the setting for an appointment that twisted in her chest, alleviated somewhat by deep breaths of ocean air. She kept breathing deeply and steadily, walking slowly along the beaten-down sand of the backshore. One time, she turned toward the ocean and saw a couple of high school kids sitting on a platform. The girl was very cute, with short hair and a loud laugh. The boy was handsome in the way that took a while to recognize, with his black hair almost covering his eyes and a grouchy but receptive expression animating his face. The girl was clearly interested in the boy, the boy not so interested in the girl. Wow, Sumire thought. I remember that. Seven years has released me from that.

Taichi was supposed to be waiting for her in a restaurant about a quarter of a mile away, on a break from a conference having to deal with immunology that somehow was taking place in the same area. It had been a month since they had spoken, after a month before that. Both had attended universities in Tokyo, different but fairly near, and the two had happened upon each other in the space between. Taichi had worn thinner over the years, possibly more handsome but no longer shining. She definitely looked better, having lost any particular desire to look great. But she remained bewildered about why she continued flinging herself against a wall that had refused to give way a long time ago. It helped that Chihaya, who she loved with all her heart, wasn't around very much, being on a continual circuit of karuta playing and training when she wasn't absolutely forced to pursue her studies at the university Sumire also attended. And Taichi's face no longer tightened with pain when Chihaya emerged as a topic of conversation. Sumire had no doubt that he still loved her deeply, but it's possible to love something and know you can't have it.

Sumire suddenly thought of something and smiled as she cast her glance to the ground in the increasing dark. What she had acquired from Taichi was his mother Reiko, a source of endless amusement and affection. They met for coffee at least every week, with Reiko storming in, expressing annoyance at the supposed waste of time before extending the visit by an hour or so and making her irritation clear when Sumire had to leave "early." Reiko's scowling beauty was always a joy to behold, and her identical rants provided Sumire with countless hours of hidden laughter. Her loving complaints about her husband and daughter came out as praise, and her endless annoyance at Taichi's life choices betrayed an almost helpless love. When it came to Sumire the charges included her Taichi image gallery, which had not existed for six years; her impertinence, made up of blocking for Taichi and providing the pretext for the two women to meet; her embarrassing knowledge of Reiko's own perpetually betrayed expectations laced with grudging statements of forgiveness. Reiko, despite everything, was a palpably kinder person than when she and Sumire first collided, and every year or so she thanked Sumire for scolding her about trying to keep Taichi from becoming his own person. Much more valuable, for Sumire, was Reiko's thanks for loving Taichi, when no one else consistently seemed to do. And every New Year's, Reiko would make some gesture to Sumire, most valuably best wishes traced in an elegant and clear calligraphy pressed perfectly into extremely expensive washi.

After a brisk walk, Sumire reached the oceanside restaurant where Taichi was supposedly waiting for her. Based on the menu display outside, she could immediately tell that it was beyond her budget, but Taichi always insisted on paying and she always let him. She spotted and gazed at him through the large windows in front, walked into the warm interior, and crossed to the table where he was waiting. He stood up, smiling at her, and sat down once she was seated. Sumire's guess was that he had been taught to help seat women but thought it was a bit much.

"Have you been here long?" Sumire asked.

"A while," Taichi said. "There's only so much time I want to spend discussing the immune system and environmental heavy metals."

Sumire laughed. Taichi gave her a big smile, rewarded. Damn, she told herself, you are an idiot. What the hell are you doing torturing yourself by hanging out with this guy?

"What about you?" Taichi asked.

"I've been listening to someone talk about coloration in natural cosmetics."

"Maybe they do it with heavy metals."

The two of them smiled at each other again, then bowed their heads simultaneously. It was a habit of theirs. They were unified in their shying away. Those little points of unification mattered a lot to Sumire. If she couldn't have him, she could at least be at sync with him in pleasant moments. That was probably more than most people had with him. For an almost comically handsome, highly cultivated man, his awkwardness was remarkably embedded in his thought and manners. Oh Chihaya, she thought, you have passed up so much. He's not perfect, he's far from perfect, but he is so damned close.

They chattered away through the different courses, enjoying a couple of bottles of really excellent wine, secure in knowing that they didn't have far to stagger to their hotels. Sumire found herself fascinated by Taichi's rimless glasses, which she always blocked out except for moments like these. He would be a great-looking doctor or professor or whatever. She wondered what she looked like to him. She definitely didn't look like the looks-obsessed, childish girl she had been in high school. Her features were more clearly defined, her hair was longer, and her body was maturing into something she could claim as womanly. What do people look like to each other? She pondered that nebulous question, the room slightly kaleidoscopic as she gazed at it, after three glasses of red wine.

"My mother," Taichi said looking up at her, "is more obsessed with you than usual."

Sumire laughed. "Well, that's nice."

"I have to warn you, although I maybe shouldn't," Taichi said. "She's about to try to drag you off somewhere to 'make her less parochial.'"

Sumire laughed again. "I haven't heard that before. I didn't know I was parochial. Childish and careless in my ways, but not parochial."

"Well, she's on a mission for that purpose," Taichi smiled. His smile was warm. Bathing in the smile, Sumire suddenly reeled with a realization that he valued her in some way, that he wasn't just killing time when they were together. She had preempted that knowledge in order to kill hope in its cradle, but the sudden insight that she actually meant something to him, clear from his smile, pierced and warmed her. Such small things, she thought, but so huge. Love as she named it seven years ago was so small now, and the barely acceptable substitutes for it then could roar in like waves now, redeeming and transforming unpredictable regions of the heart and mind.

Then came a hairpin turn.

"Sumire, what are your plans after this job you're in?"

"Well," she said, casting for an answer, "I'm going to stay in Tokyo. There are a couple of big companies in the city with cosmetics divisions, and I've gotten to know people at both of them. I think I can get someone to hire me for marketing or something like that."

Taichi shifted nervously in his chair. "Yeah, I'm staying in Tokyo, too. I've kind of been hired on as a researcher in a med school there. A lifetime of studying heavy metals, you know." He smiled.

Sumire smiled back.

"The thing is," Taichi muttered, "I know it's strange, but the truth is that I like you."

Sumire's jaw literally dropped. His words, devoid of meaning in her, ricocheted in her mind and left her where she had been before she heard them.

"What are you saying?" she managed to ask.

"You know," Taichi said while looking away, "I just like you."

"What do you mean you like me?" she asked.

"I mean I like you," he said.

Sumire finally absorbed the moment and felt what she did not expect to feel in her dreams, when Taichi said something like that. Suddenly, disoriented, she filled with rage.

"Taichi," she said through gritted teeth, "I know you like me, but what is it that I don't know? Are you telling me something I don't know? Damn it, you have to say this so I get what you're saying, because this isn't funny. It isn't funny at all. You can't deceive me here or I swear I'll kill you. I don't know why, but I kind of want to kill you anyway, right now."

Strangely, Taichi wasn't shaken by her words. He managed to keep his eyes locked on hers. He looked like someone driving on a congested highway mere minutes after getting his driver's license.

"I've gotten to liking you differently in the past year," he said. "I haven't wanted to tell you because you might think I'm taking advantage of you and I'm kind of unable to feel anything a lot of the time, so I don't want to make false promises. I don't want to give you less than you deserve and I don't want to treat you like the girlfriends I've gone through in the past few years…"

"'Don't don't don't,'" Sumire said. "How many don't can you come up with? I don't want to hear any more. What are the 'cans'?" She felt dizzy, battered, years of longing somehow changing into a firestorm of remembered longings, misdirections, missed connections, certainties of hopelessness carefully forged so she could keep knowing him coming apart and shattering without joy. Infuriated, she wiped tears from her face, smearing her makeup, which she still hated to do.

"I can give you a lot more affection, including sharing our bodies together, hopefully as much as you want and deserve," Taichi said miserably. "I can give you my time. I can be there for you as we go through life. That's it. I didn't want to confess like this. I wasn't even sure it was a confession. But I do like you, in a way more loving than liking. I'm sorry if it's not enough. After all this time, I can understand why you're angry."

"You know how I feel, but you don't know how I feel," Sumire said. "You've seen me loving you all these years, never stopping, not now, but you haven't known, ever, what it's been like, how stupid and sad I've felt, how happy I've been to be in your life, how good it's been to be friends with your mother, how blessed I've been just knowing you as you've been, how much I've longed for loving I've never gotten elsewhere, how many calendars I've marked with times only meant for you and then thrown away to make the feeling go away.

"Taichi," she said, "you have to be serious. More serious than you've ever been, more serious than you'll ever be again. You have to really mean it. There can't be 'don't' or 'can't' or maybe. This hurts me so much. I want it, but you have to mean it. Or I swear to God I'll hate you, maybe for the rest of my life."  
"Oh, damn it," Sumire said, wiping tears away with a napkin. She suddenly realized that she'd made a lot of people in the dining room uncomfortable.

"Okay," she said. "In the end, I'll probably take you up on it, because I want a chance at what I want. But you have to negotiate, and you have to be willing for me to end up with favorable terms. You have to negotiate, and you can't say maybe, ever. I won't abide "maybe." But we can probably make this work. Maybe. You'd better be serious, though. Don't mess with me."

Taichi sat back, relieved. She immediately guessed that just getting past it all far outweighed the unpleasantness she had hit him with, and would hit him with again, and again, and again, until she had struck him with it enough times to find out whether love could bloom in the chasms of her heart where it had always been denied.

*

"You turned him down? You actually turned him down?"

"Yes, I did. He wasn't all that surprised about it."

Chihaya widened her eyes and leaned forward. "But Sumire, you always wanted…"

"Yes, well, I still do, but he really didn't know what he meant, I think. My feeling is that he thought I'd be a terrific replacement for real love, although he'd rather die than say such a thing. I think he's begun to cherish me and appreciate how much I cherish him. He's lonely, and he wants to make a life with someone he cherishes. He likes me, given my startling beauty that increases with the years, but I couldn't accept. He thanked me for thinking about it. We're having dinner together next week."

Sumire leaned forward awkwardly, cross-legged on the floor, and snatched a handful of snacks from a bowl between Chihaya and her. There wasn't much room; she had to work hard not to knock over the bottles of iced green tea they were drinking. It had not been an easy speech to make; she was actually shaken by her decision to pass on something she had wanted since she was a girl, and she was secretly worried that Taichi would think that she hadn't believed his confession. In addition, she was afraid that she would lose her mind, knock on his door in the night, say she'd change her mind, wrap her arms around him, and fasten herself there like a barnacle until they both grew old and crumbled into dust. Meanwhile, the real love of Taichi's life, Chihaya, had the ridiculous, hilarious expression that never failed to take over her face when she was surprised. It consisted of her big eyes enlarged to the size of full moons and her mouth hanging slightly open as she seemed to gasp for air.

Sumire laughed at her. "You look silly, senpai."

"But," Chihaya said, "Does his mom know about this? I don't even want to imagine what she thought of it."

"Oh yes," Sumire said with a mouthful of little soy-sauce flavoured vegetable crackers. "I talked to Reiko for a couple of hours about it. First, she was shocked. Then, she was mad that Taichi hadn't told her. Then, she wondered why he would pick me. Then, she wondered why I would reject him. Then, she said it was all as stupid as she would have predicted if she knew. Then…she just got sad for us. She actually told me how sorry she was two times. I would have been a hell of a daughter in law."

Chihaya slapped the floor beside her right knee. "That can't be her! She just not that nice!"

Sumire grinned fiendishly. "While you were fleeing from Reiko, I was cultivating her friendship. Your handicap with her was that you gratified her by running away, so she made you run away on every occasion. I wouldn't stop bugging her or challenging her about the hell she kept putting Taichi through. So Taichi was in love with you, but I got his mom."

Chihaya exclaimed, "Oh yeah, did you say you would have been her daughter in law?"

Sumire gave her the evil grin again. "That would have been my goal, and I wouldn't go halfway once I started. He would have married me whether he thought it was a good idea, or not. And together… We would have been some kind of couple, that's for sure."

That statement froze into a silence between them. Outside, a gusty storm splattered the skylight with bursts of rain. Sumire liked to lie on her back on the floor, after work, and see what was outside. Blue sky, white clouds, storm clouds, glare, sometimes snow or ice, there was always something to see out there.

Chihaya followed Sumire's eyes up to the skylight and pondered something without knowing what it was. I'm always doing that, Chihaya thought. I'm always thinking about things without thinking about things. How have I even gotten through life without being hit by a car or something? And now I find this out. Oh, well, Taichi wouldn't have told me and Sumire only wanted to tell me so I wouldn't hear from someone else. What was Taichi thinking? When did he start liking Sumire? Maybe it was right in front of me for a long time. Or maybe Taichi's just had it with trying to tell me anything. Maybe he's just happy to be with me when he seems to be, but he's actually just hearing buzzing sounds when I talk. Buzz buzz buzz blah blah blah, karuta Taichi, Taichi karuta, buzz buzz buzz. I should have talked with him more, back in the day, about something more than karuta. Because now he doesn't volunteer talking about anything else. I mean, he didn't have to tell me about Sumire. Why would he tell me about a girlfriend? He hates it when I don't care that he has a girlfriend. That stopped a long time ago. I've always cared that he had a girlfriend, though. It always made me mad. Why…

Chihaya short-circuited that thought and ate some snacks and drank the rest of her tea. Sumire gave her a sweet smile.

"Thinking about something, senpai?" Sumire asked her.

"No," Chihaya softly answered. "I never really do. I never really think about something." She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

Sumire stood up and walked over to the worktable that took up a wall by the door that went into her bedroom. A new laptop computer sat in the center of the table, cabled up to a 28" monitor. "Well senpai, you want to watch that tournament Arata was in a couple of days ago? The whole thing can be streamed."

Chihaya frowned. "Stop calling me senpai. I mean it, kouhai."

"I love being called kouhai. Well, do you?"

Chihaya looked down at the floor and nodded. Sure, she would watch Arata play karuta anytime. It was always fun. And these days, he looked so deeply happy, having married his worry-wart childhood friend Yuu, the one who food-poisoned him and told her to go away when Taichi and her tried to visit Arata back in high school. Yuu was not friendly to her at all, and now they had two little kids. It wasn't so much the brevity of the romance she had had with Arata that pissed her off, Chihaya mused, as the fact that he would marry and have kids with his childhood friend. She should have found that girl and shaken her while she had the chance. Yuu wasn't a bad person, though. The bad person was…

"Senpai, where are you senpai," Sumire said, waving her hand in front of her eyes. It's starting up. See?"

Chihaya had a sudden flutter of expectation that drove away the sadness that threatened to descend and drown her right there on Sumire's floor. The big high-definition monitor showed the interior of a big, beautiful traditional Japanese style building that looked as though it had been yanked out of a historical epic. Long dark wood beams traversed the ceiling and light poured through a lot of windows. The final match was taking place dead center of the building. Arata, clad in an elegant understated kimono, knelt across from a pretty woman who was maybe in her early twenties. His hair was even shorter than it used to be, and like Taichi, he wore glasses with almost invisible frames. He was still handsome, a little worn by time but handsome, and happy. I can't help it, Chihaya thought, that it annoys me that he's happy.

The match was ferocious, the takes blurred with speed, the posture and attentiveness of the players impeccable. They were in a world that no one else shared, a world made up of cards arrayed before them, where courtly love poems hundreds of years old cryptically fed into the unconscious minds deep in the gameplay, by way of the nasal monotonous recitation of syllables and cadences. Kana had taught her about the various ways the poems permeated and permuted within what Chihaya had, for years, seen as just a game of speed and wit.

Arata won, barely. The woman he was playing didn't look as though she had lost, and he looked as though winning was a different thing than it used to be. They bowed low to each other, and that was that. When did it end for you, Arata, Chihaya thought. When did the hunger end? It's still there, for me, and there are very few places it can go.

Sumire turned off the computer and looked at Chihaya. "That woman is really fast, isn't she?"

Chihaya nodded, forcing a smile. "Yes. I could barely see the takes. I was never that elegant. I was like Whack-a-Mole or something with those cards, back when."

Sumire laughed loudly. "You were! You were merciless on those cards! Along comes the se card maybe, and you're going to let that one know what you think. Bam!"

Chihaya paused. "The se card, huh. Funny that you thought of that one."

"Well," Sumire said, "it was always important to Taichi."

Chihaya gazed at Sumire, who was messing around at the table. "I didn't know that. I tried to send him a message with it, once, but I didn't know he thought about it that much."

Sumire smiled. "He actually has a big reproduction of that card in a glass frame, under special indirect light. Two images, two sides of the card, and the poem written in calligraphy underneath."

"Sumire," Chihaya said with a sudden constriction in her throat, "where have I been all this time? Where have I gone? It's like I don't have the slightest real memory of getting here."

Sumire walked over and pushed her, making the startled Chihaya roll back on her back. "You're here now. That's the important thing!" She smiled down at the bewildered Chihaya. "Because you're my senpai. My beautiful, strange, hilarious senpai who's loved by the man I love. You're right here. You don't have to remember how you got here."

*

Taichi walked into his apartment, paused, and locked the door. The place was very clean. His mom had sent over a housekeeper, after obtaining a copy of the key, and Taichi had lost the energy to battle her over such issues. It was really hard for her to tell anyone that she loved them, including her husband and children, and Taichi knew she fiercely loved her children because she forced housekeepers on them. Whatever, the place was incredibly clean. It was a small, snug, tastefully nice place, with a lot of attention paid to decoration but with sparse furnishings. He liked it.

Somehow, he knew she was there before he heard her. Chihaya, come on, leave me alone. But of course he would let her in. She would keep pounding on the door if he didn't. When she started knocking he walked over to the door and opened it suddenly, making her almost fall in when her knocking arm suddenly had nowhere to go. He grinned at her. She's goofier than she used to be, he thought. Or maybe she's working at it.

Chihaya glared at him for the little prank with the door and grabbed him by the tie, her big bag swinging under the other arm. "Hey, don't mess with me."

"Why should I stop now?" Taichi asked. "Messing with you is one of my greatest pleasures in this life."

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then walked in and looked around.

"What are you looking for?" Taichi asked.

"Why do you think I'm looking for something?"

"It's hard to explain," Taichi said. "It's like instead of kind of checking the place out, you're staring at it through binoculars."

Chihaya kept looking around. Taichi led her into the kitchen. "Tea?" he asked. "Mineral water? A generic soft drink?"

"I'll have tea," she said, and he set to making it. She watched him turn on the kettle, put what looked like expensive loose green tea into a pot, and take a couple of big cups out of a cupboard. "It'll be coming up when it's good and ready," Taichi replied.

"Spill it," Taichi said. "You're not here to drink tea and watch my bonsai grow. What do you want?"

Hum, Chihaya thought to herself. How do I admit that I want to see something on the wall when I've been here so many times? It's like I don't bother noticing what's in his place. But this must be done.

"Sumire told me you have something special on the wall," Chihaya said, "and she said I should come see what it is."

Taichi nodded and turned off the kettle. He poured boiling water into the pot and covered the pot to let it steep. "Okay," he said. "There's a woman in one of my classes who recommended a shop that does this kind of thing." He led her into his bedroom. Wait, Chihaya thought, what was Sumire doing in his bedroom? It's none of my damn business.

A long, elegant, antique wooden dresser, six feet long and polished, stretched across the far wall. There were two large photographs in expensive frames on either end, with a bonsai tree in the center. Above the dresser was a very large framed object with a yellow matte background. In the upper part were two large, meticulously recreated images of the se card. Below them, someone had written the poem in extremely fine calligraphy. Someone had also drawn a couple of emblematic images in the bottom two points of the frame. A covered lamp stretched above the piece, illuminating all of what was there with museum quality lighting.

"This is it," Taichi said. "What are you wondering?"

"Why the se card?"

"If you don't already know, I can't explain it to you." Taichi gestured to the objects on the dresser top below. It took a few seconds before Chihaya could comprehend what she was seeing. On the left was a group picture of Arata, Taichi, and her, with her in the middle. The photograph was a professional one, luminous and detailed. "When was that?" she asked. "I can't remember."

"That was at a competition about a year after the meijin / queen tournament," he said. "It was a nice day. We were all happy. Arata and I were becoming real friends, for the time being but not for too long." Taichi smiled, but he stopped when he saw Chihaya's face. "Oh, for God's sake," he said. "You know we weren't friends. We loved the same woman and we never liked each other much." Chihaya's face flushed and he smiled.

"So look at this," he said. He gestured toward the other photograph.

There she was, in high school, in the clubroom, sweaty, hair disheveled, wearing an old tee shirt and sweat pants. Bathed in evening light, gazing out through the big window, she looked exquisitely beautiful. The image was so clear and detailed that you could actually see small reflected images in her eyes. Taichi smiled happily at the picture.

Chihaya was speechless for a moment. Then she said, "Who took this?"

"You didn't know about it," Taichi grinned. "A newspaper club person was walking around taking pictures all over campus, and I got her to take that of you. You didn't even see her. You didn't know she was there."

The se card display, exhibited over a long table holding a portrait of the three friends and an extraordinarily beautiful candid shot of Chihaya. Oh Taichi, Chihaya thought. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I don't know what I'm sorry for. You should never have wasted your time loving me. Taichi looked at her thoughtfully, then led her to the kitchen. He poured tea, gave her a cup, and poured one for himself.

They stood in the kitchen, leaning against counters, drinking the tea slowly and not saying anything.

Taichi looked at her. "The rest," he said. "Tell me the rest."

Chihaya shyly covered her eyes with her free hand. "Sumire told me about your proposal and that she turned you down. Why didn't you tell me?" She recoiled, muttering to yourself. Of course he's not going to tell you. Would you tell him something like that? Come to think of it, what would something like that be in my case?

Taichi nodded. "We've gotten close and I've grown to appreciate and respect her a lot. On the shallow side, she's gotten really pretty and there's that. I told her that I wanted to try it out, because I really like her. She chewed me out for a while about the surprise change and how she couldn't afford to be fooled, and she'd kill me if I didn't mean it, etc. But she turned me down. She couldn't believe it would materialize and she wasn't sure I knew what I was doing. It was hard, but I didn't blame her. It had been years, and I was offering something that was more tentative than it should have been. She deserves to be loved passionately and blindly, and that isn't where I am. Not that she isn't worth that, she's worth that for the rest of her life, but I left some part of myself behind, somewhere."

Chihaya glared at him, which he answered with a grimace. "She said she would have married you."

Taichi laughed. "That would have been a risk I was willing to take. My mother is in love with Sumire and would strangle me if I hadn't been willing to take it all the way. Being married to Sumire would probably have been a really good thing. She's practical like I am, and we pretty much want the same things. But she's probably right; it wouldn't have worked out. I just hope she knew that I meant it."

What are you doing telling a woman about how you feel about another woman? Chihaya thought. Wait a minute, what am I talking about? I haven't laid claim to anything. What's happening to me?

Cold chills running down the back of her neck, she suddenly jolted straight up in a weird state of fierce clarity. She had to hold together, to find out later why she was having trouble keeping track of things. Shinobu needed her. She had to be strong and clear for Shinobu.

Taichi watched her as she muddled around inside her head. "Chihaya, what are you doing? Is everything alright?"

"Yes," she said, "Things are okay. I'm just taking the train to Kyoto to see Shinobu and stay over at her family's house tonight. It's probably going to be a bit hard."

Taichi nodded. "It will be hard. But she has you. She couldn't have made it without you."

Tears stung Chihaya's eyes. She was on the verge of saying that she had to go when a knock came on the door. Taichi crossed the room and opened the door. Chihaya felt a rush of primal terror go through her. It was Taichi's mother, Reiko, narrowing her eyes as she looked at Chihaya and sized up her prey.

"I just made some tea," Taichi said. "Would you like some, mom?"

Reiko smiled gently at him and shook her head. "No, I just wanted to make sure that Reina did a good job cleaning the place." Taichi shook his head, rubbing his eyes. "Well, it's important, I don't want to pay someone to do a bad job, and you won't tell me if they do."

"And you, Chihaya dear," Reiko said. The "chan" was the killer blow. Chihaya's unceasing terror of Taichi's mother blipped into the red zone. "I'm glad you're here. There is something I would like to discuss with you."

Taichi glanced over at Chihaya and nearly burst out in insensitive laughter. She was pale as death.

"Thank you, Mrs. Mashima, but I have to go get on the train to Kyoto," Chihaya said. "I'll be back tomorrow and we can talk then."

"I'll drive you to the station," Reiko said.

"No, it's alright…"

"I didn't ask you, I told you that I'll drive you to the station. It's important to make these distinctions when you're listening to someone."

My God, Taichi thought, my mother is without mercy. And she'd actually been warming up to Chihaya. But every time she saw Chihaya was another chance to bring overwhelming fear to someone's heart, and it was too great an opportunity to pass up. Besides, Chihaya had given Taichi his first heartbreak, and that could not be forgiven.

Taichi watched as Chihaya grabbed her bag and fled out the door in front of his mother, after saying a quick goodbye. He smiled as he did so. He was so fond of her. Affection and laughter blazed in his heart. Back when they were younger, sadness dampened the laughter. Now, sometimes, he could enjoy her as a pure source of amusement.

And she hadn't noticed the little surprise in the se card display. The text done in calligraphy under the facsimiles of the card faces was not only the poem, the gorgeous poem of reunion. The poem was followed by the message Chihaya sent him that one day, piercing his heart, explaining the poem to him across the distance of their alienated friendship: "This poem is not about 'waiting', nor about 'missing'. It is about asking fate for a chance to come across each other once more." This lovely reflection of Chihaya's was something he had memorized and called up thousand times, the guiding wisdom of their friendship.

Sumire had bet lunch that Chihaya wouldn't notice that, and now he had to pay up. That was fine, since he always paid anyway, but he wished that Chihaya had seen it. She was under no such obligation. No matter what he wanted her to see, she had nothing to do with his wishes. Knowing that freed him. It was the only thing that made it possible for him to keep loving her.

*

Through the limits of his tunnel vision, Suou watched the forest darken under the strange storm sky. Snow was flying in mid-October and the wind was coming in from an unusual direction. The little residential hospital where Shinobu lived now sat below a long wooded ridge, above a small lake. On a nice day, the place was cheerful-looking, brightly painted in off-white with dark maroon trim around the windows. On a day like this, it looked like the loneliest place in the world. That's what he was thinking when the taxi stopped on the gravel driveway and he climbed out. Every light in the place seemed to be on. Suou grabbed the large, heavy box he had brought with him and walked to the front door.

At the reception desk, he told a desk clerk who he was and who he came to see. The clerk quickly, efficiently inspected the contents of the box and gave it back to him. After a couple of minutes, a pretty middle-aged woman in a long white coat walked out of a door across the lobby and shook his hand as he struggled to hold the box with the other.

"Ms. Wakamiya has been looking forward to your coming," she said. Suou guessed that she was a resident. The hospital took close care of the small number of patients who could afford to live here. "She has been making sarcastic jokes about you since she woke up this morning."

Suou smiled and followed the doctor through a couple of glass sliding doors and down a long corridor looking out on courtyards and outdoor dining areas that were now whitening under the new snow. Finally, they arrived at a pleasantly paneled dining room, empty except for Shinobu, who sat on a long common bench at a table at the exact center of the room.

Suou smiled as he sat down across from her, box beside him on the bench. Shinobu always prepared a sardonic, scathing routine for talking to him, but even to him, her admiration and respect for him was clear. "So what do you have there?" she asked.

"There's a new obsession on the internet," Suou said. "You won't believe it, but it's true." He pushed the box across the table to her. She stood up, opened the lid, and laughed delightedly. "How…did you find this?"

Suou smiled. "It's all up for sale. I thought you might not have some of it."

Obviously and openly happy, Shinobu started unloading the box contents onto the table. It was a vast trove of Snowmaru merchandise, and she hadn't seen some of it, probably since it had come out since she started treatment. She kept laughing as Suou sat happily watching her.

"Japanese mascots are an international obsession right now," Suou explained. "Snowmaru is very popular. There's no explaining it."

Shinobu grabbed a long red scarf covered with Snowmaru faces, wrapped it around her neck, and sat down with light in her eyes. I've done what I needed to do, Suou thought.

"How did you get off work?" Shinobu asked.

"They don't need me most of the time," Suou said. "Being a headmaster at that academy means going to lunch, for the most part." It's boring, he thought to himself. His meteoric rise as an expert in Japanese language and traditional culture had dropped him into an administrative position after only a year. But the school where he worked was in Kyoto, and it kept him near Shinobu. He'd never been able to stay away from her. Why, he did not know. It was not exactly love or even friendship. It was more like the rapport of two people who had saved each other's lives in battle. Or maybe it was love or friendship. There was no way to know.

"Chihaya is coming to visit this afternoon," Shinobu said. She was clearly excited beneath her monotonous tone. It's a long way from Tokyo."

Suou nodded. "Do you have any plans with her?"

Shinobu fell silent and bit her lower lip. Her eyes clouded over and she started running the table top with the fingers of both hands. "We're playing karuta," she said.

Suou's face was impassive, but he was startled. "Can you do that?" he asked.

Shinobu bitterly replied, "The proper authorities have agreed to let us play. The current round of antipsychotics seems to keep things acceptable." Her face, increasingly gaunt with the loss of adolescent baby fat and the steady wear of suffering, was the same as before, in that it became formidably beautiful when she was angry. "Chihaya actually talked with the doctors about it over the phone yesterday." Shinobu's eyes suddenly brightened with tears. "That silly girl."

"This makes the tenth time this year that she's come, doesn't it?" Suou asked.

"Twelfth," Shinobu said. "She's always been this way. I'd ignore her when she was friendly, then I'd destroy her in matches when I was angry with her, and I'd ignore her when she said hello to me, but she just won't stop. She's like a puppy who keeps following me around and insisting that we play."

"She loves you," Suou said. "She adores you, worships you. I know that's hard to accept."

Shinobu fell silent again, her eyes distant. "It's hard having a best friend."

"Indeed," Suou said. "That's why I work at being increasingly difficult for you to deal with."

Shinobu did a double-take and smiled. "You're more like a partner in crime. It's like we're able to share good stories of knocking over banks and victimizing the innocent."

Suou nodded. "When are you expecting Chihaya?"

"About an hour from now."

"Well," Suou said as he stood up, "I had best leave you to get ready for her, then. I hope you have a good time."

Shinobu's eyes shone again. "We always do." She visibly groped for words. "Thank you for coming, and thanks for the Snowmaru things. I'll give you a call tomorrow and let you know how things are going."

"That sounds good," Suou said, inwardly relieved. It had been a while since she had made him feel like an imposition, but time had left her more open to the world. That's good, he thought. The world has always been waiting for you, Shinobu. The door has always been open. Maybe you will see it there and walk through.

Chihaya watched the streets of Tokyo flash by, all of them dimmed by slanting rain. Only ten minutes to the station, she thought, calculating time remaining by the familiar streets and blocks. She tried very hard not to look at Reiko, who stared straight ahead with her hands on the wheel.

"Chihaya dear," Reiko finally said. "I know you don't care, you never have, but I thought I'd do you a favor I never thought I would. You need to know that Taichi is finally giving up on you. I really think that's true. The window is almost shut. He's too resigned to tell you such a thing, but I'm a meddling sort of person and feel that you need to know that his hope of being with you is just about to end. I've watched him get his heart broken for years, so I don't know why I'm telling you this. But Taichi loving someone for that long… It means something to me, even if it's foolishness. I just wanted to let you know. It's only fair. You've never been a bad person. You've just always been an idiot."

The insult was not unexpected, so Chihaya started moving abstractly through what Reiko had said. I'm tired, I'm worn out, Chihaya thought. That's what's wrong with me. She added together all the things Reiko had said, looked at the sum total, and started breaking the items out of the list one by one. Taichi's mother, who had always bitterly disapproved of her hanging out with her son, was trying to tell her something in something like a friendly way. There was probably a reason why she was friendly. Why? Because Taichi was almost over me, Chihaya thought, or so she said. That's why she's friendly. It makes her happy. And she wants Sumire to be with him. But there's something else. I'm so tired. I don't know what else it could be. Maybe when I get back from seeing Shinobu, I'll know or be able to figure it out. Why am I so tired? When did I become so confused? Am I finally, really losing my mind like Shinobu? How can I help Shinobu if I'm losing my mind too?

Chihaya's eyes flooded with tears. Everything blurred. She must have made some kind of sound because she felt Reiko looking at her.

"Chihaya," Reiko said, "It's alright. I know you're a good person. But sometimes, we just need to know these things."

Chihaya just stared outside until they reached the station. She checked her bag to make sure she had everything for an overnight stay, before getting out of the car, until she was satisfied. Then she turned and looked at Reiko, who was looking at her.

"Where are you going in Kyoto?" Reiko asked.

"I'm going to visit Wakamiya Shinobu," Chihaya said. "She's been sick for a long tie and it makes her feel better when I visit. And I miss her all the time."

"Good," Reiko said. "Have a good visit. I have a sister who lives in Kyoto, too. I'll message it to you. If you need something there, just call her."

Chihaya paused before speaking frankly. "Why are you being nice to me? You hate me."

"No dear, I don't hate you," Reiko said quietly. "You just have everything that I always wanted to have and didn't. Lots of things about you, like your energy and beauty and sense of wonder, I would have killed to possess when I was your age. And you broke my son's heart. But go catch your train."

Chihaya smiled awkwardly, nodded, said an almost silent goodbye, and stepped out into the rain. She stood there, feeling the cold water wake up her quivering soul, and walked to the station to catch her train.

Somewhere between walking into the station and waking up near the third stop on the train to Kyoto, Chihaya dropped into a bottomless sleep like Alice falling into Wonderland, something she always had in her mind because it was the only English language book that she had ever mastered. Down, down, down she fell, apparitions of what might have been real in the waking world and what only was real in dreams mixing together and vanishing as she fell. Then she hit bottom. There was no big room or key or potion, no white rabbit or sea of tears. She was in an ancient temple gathering hall, the only person there, which was frightening because it seemed so cavernous. There was no furniture. In the semi-darkness, directly in the center of the room, was an object on the floor. She crossed over and sat across from her. It was a karuta pack.

The cards had no poems, which made them strange. She guessed that she could play them anyway, but the lack of poems frightened her in an uncanny way and left her lonelier than she had ever been. All the love poems, the poems of isolation, the witty extended metaphors, the complaints about passing time, all had disappeared from the cards. This hurt her, although she didn't understand the pain. It was like the echo of a voice that had disappeared forever from the world. It was like the end of possibility, like all her lost chances for love and the people she had disappointed by not loving them well.

Chihaya tried to play solitaire with the deck, both engaging in gameplay and acting as the reader. The dream didn't allow her to understand her own voice when she was reading, but that was okay. Her voice's echo retrieved the poems that were missing from the cards. My God, she thought to herself. I'm barely here. I'm barely playing. There's no one here to play with. But it's all I know how to do. Please, someone, come in here.

Suddenly, a light switched on at one end of the room, bright and widely spread. She and Taichi sat in the floor under the light, talking. She saw his thoughtful, usually kind, sad face looking at her, and saw herself look down. And a past disclosed itself. What would it have been like, she thought, if I had just calmed down, if I had set aside the cards for just five minutes. What would the world have seen of me, and how would I have seen the world? And what do I do with Taichi so close to me? Immediately, the scene changed and she saw Taichi and her standing together, with tenuous certainty in their eyes, hands joined trembling in a raw and dizzying adventure. She saw them kiss, then jump back from an electrical charge that arced between their lips. She saw them gradually become lovers over the years, eventually have children together, lean on each other throughout their lives as they had in their first few years. Arata was somewhere in another world, the one where she actually had tasted romance for the first time, with him. The world she was looking at was hers and Taichi's, both knowable and never to be, and the realization of the world she had kept from happening was like a knife moving slowly under her ribs.

Chihaya woke up on the train with tears streaming down her face. She had awakened because of a high school girl in uniform beside her, who had tugged her sleeve and said something to her. "I'm so sorry for waking you up," the girl said, "but I was worried. I was afraid you were sick in your sleep or something."

Chihaya wiped her eyes and nodded. "Thank you," she said, "but I'm as fine as I will likely ever be." The girl's eyes widened. "No really," Chihaya said, realizing that she didn't need to spread darkness to this sweet and helpful girl, "I needed someone to wake me up."

Chihaya stepped off the train at Kyoto station and was startled to meet a welcome party. It was one person, Shinobu's grandmother. Shinobu's grandmother always made her bow, because in Chihaya's imagination she was one of those people who embodied the spirit of Japan. Mrs. Wakamiya was tall and slender, wearing Western clothes as elegant as a kimono, with silver hair done in a very old style that seemed completely new, her face somehow both smooth and full and crystalline and fragile. Chihaya bowed to her, and Ms. Wakamiya bowed in return.

"Why did you come?" Chihaya asked. "I'm really glad you did, but why?"

Mrs. Wakamiya smiled. "You're a dear and true friend of my beloved granddaughter. Shinobu told us when your train was arriving. The weather is getting bad, so we'll get you everywhere you need to go. I'm taking you by the house so you can put your things in the bedroom where you'll be sleeping, then I'll drive you to the hospital."

An hour later they left the vast, traditional Wakamiya home and drove through the light but steady snow to the hospital where Shinobu waited. When they arrived, a young male doctor came out almost immediately to meet Mrs. Wakamiya in the lobby. Wow, Chihaya thought, what service.

Mrs. Wakamiya said, "We've already spoken with Dr. Hanesawa. He gave permission for Ms. Ayase here to play karuta with Shinobu. She brought a card deck and a device to play the readings."

The doctor nodded. "Yes, that's right. We're confident that your granddaughter will at least be stable enough to tell us if something goes wrong. As it is, she's very happy about the visit."

Chihaya smiled at him for that, and she followed him with Mrs. Wakamiya to a large, windowless common room with a big open floor space in the center. "We've prepared the room," the doctor said. "I'll leave you here, Ms. Ayase. Mrs. Wakamiya, I'd like to speak to you about some things in the office, if you have time."

Shinobu's grandmother nodded, smiled at Chihaya, and left the room with the doctor. After a minute or so, a sliding door leading to a hallway opened and Shinobu walked in, smiling. Chihaya ran over to her and hugged her. Shinobu went through the motions of resistance, paused, then embraced Chihaya in return.

"Thanks for coming here," Shinobu said. "So what did you bring?"

Chihaya excitedly said, "I have the cards and a recorded set of readings, but I also have something different."

Shinobu stopped smiling. "I don't always like things that are different, you know."

"Sure!" Chihaya said. "But you told me… Last week you told me on the phone, when we talked… You told me you were scared of…"

"Yeah," Shinobu said. "I'm scared I'll hallucinate again."

The two women gazed into each other's eyes. Shinobu sat down on the floor as Chihaya arranged the cards and the reading device. Shinobu, two years after high school, had become completely schizophrenic. Her charming habit of seeing the cards as people had turned into full-tilt delusion, where she heard them telepathically describing where they had been, what they wanted to do, what they expected of Shinobu. The little card people would translate the voices of the cards and would sometimes wander off during games to visit cards in other games during matches. When the cards started haranguing her about their disappointments in her, she tried to drown herself in the pond outside her grandmother's house. Among other things, this ended her dream, and her grandmother's, of creating a professional karuta world. It took Shinobu five years of professional treatment to stabilize. Now, she was afraid of going back to the game, but she also wanted to go back because she missed the community in which she had moved with honor. So Chihaya had come up with a plan.

"Okay," Chihaya said. "I have a bunch of cards here. They're not real karuta cards, but they're copies of the se card, for your reunion with karuta. You want to feel happy with the cards and recognize them, but you don't want to be sick, right? So if, when we're playing, you start seeing things, saying something like 'now' and I'll put down one of these cards to mark the good feeling but replace the hallucination. The se cards that are left will show the number of reunions with karuta you will have on your own when you get better. Right?"

Shinobu had trouble catching her breath after exhaling once, lips trembling. "Okay, let's do it. There's some kind of genius in you, you know."

"Yeah, but I'm only smart about the cards," Chihaya said.

No, Shinobu thought, that's not true. You're smart about what people need in their hearts and finding at least one path that might lead to what they need. Let's do it.

So they played for a couple of hours, both putting everything they had into it, occasionally smiling at each other or making sounds of annoyance or comical exaggerated noises. In small moments of anxiety and approaching terror, Shinobu would start hallucinating and say 'now', and Chihaya would put one of the fake se cards down in a pile. It was an effective way of substituting sanity for madness in the process of a game that had brought Shinobu infinite amounts of both. When they finally quit, exhausted, there were five se cards that had replaced five approaching hallucinations. Shinobu took them from Chihaya.

"Can I keep these?"

"Sure!" Chihaya said. "They're yours! That's why I brought them."

Shinobu gazed at her. "You're the only friend I've ever had, Chihaya," she said.

Chihaya's faced turned a violent red. "You're my best friend, but what about your others? What about Arata and Suou?"

Shinobu shook her head. "They're peers. Suou is close to a friend, but you're the only friend I've ever had."

Silence fell. Then Chihaya shuffled over to Shinobu on her knees and threw her arms around her.

Shinobu buried her faced in one of Chihaya's shoulders.

"Thank you so much," Shinobu said.

When Shinobu's time was up and she had to go back into the treatment wing, Chihaya walked back to the lobby. To her surprise, Mrs. Wakamiya was there.

"You waited all this time?" Chihaya asked.

"Of course I did. I don't want to go home and drive back here so I could take you home."

Chihaya laughed. Her time with Shinobu had filled her world with light. I never wanted to have any kind of romance more than I wanted to be Shinobu's friend, she thought. And then it turns out I'm her one true friend. This was a very good day.

A short time after, the confusion she had felt right before leaving Tokyo descended on her, filling her with dread for not reason she could identify.

*

Taichi jolted up in bed, heart pounding, his phone ringing close to his ear on the night table. He was exhausted from the night before, having read about fifty pages of technical literature about heavy metals, the way the body absorbed them, and the reason for divergent effects in the body, especially neurologically. He had gone to sleep reading the stuff. Now he was groping for the phone, grasping it, answering. 3:00 a.m. was at the top of the screen.

"This is…"

"Taichi, this is Chihaya. I'm sorry for calling you so early."

No, Chihaya, "early" is sometime near daylight. It's not "early."

"What's happening, Chihaya? Are you alright?"

"Yes, I am. Shinobu's family is great. I think I'm catching the train this morning. I was wondering whether you could pick me up at the station when I get there. Let me know if you can."

Taichi sat up and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. "I'm pretty much free after noon today, Chihaya. Why are you calling me right now? Have you had any sleep?"

"No, I haven't. I can't sleep."

"Well, go to bed and close your eyes and don't sleep, then. Relaxing your body and letting yourself dream or just drift around in your head is the main thing."

"Okay, I'll do that."

Taichi looked around at the room, half-asleep, listening to the sound of Chihaya's soft breath come through the phone. "Chihaya, what's wrong?"

"Oh, Taichi, I've been feeling like I'm completely nuts recently. People have always called me an idiot or an airhead and I was never that bad, until now. When I went to see Shinobu it was like the blind leading the blind. Except we had a great time. Taichi, I don't know what to do. I don't know what's wrong."

"Well, don't worry. You're in a safe place with friends right now, right? Just get some sleep there or on the train and come on home today. I'll take care of you then."

Taichi heard Chihaya start to sob on the other end of the line. "Oh Taichi, I've been so mean to you," she choked out.

Taichi swung himself to the side of the bed and spoke loudly into the phone. "Chihaya, get some sleep and something to eat and come home. I don't know what you mean by being mean to me, but my only problem right now is that I'm worried about you and I'm concerned that you will do the opposite of what I told you to do."

She whimpered out a good-bye and said she'd call him about when she'd be coming in. Then, she abruptly rang off. Taichi stared at his phone. What in the world was wrong with Chihaya? Did his mom say something bad to her? No, she wouldn't do that. She never wanted to hurt Chihaya, just scare her.

Taichi realized that he was completely awake. He got up and trudged to the kitchen and got a bottle of spring water out of the refrigerator. Damn, he thought. I really need to sleep. I'll have to tie myself to the chair in the 7:30 seminar, to keep from falling over. Chihaya, what is wrong.

She really hadn't been that bad since high school, just a little lost. She'd won the queen title twice in a row, and after that, as he had predicted to her mother, her hearing deteriorated a bit and she cut a fine figure in competition every single time, without quite breaking through the ceiling. To make things worse for her along those lines, her goddess Shinobu had gone insane and disappeared into the obscurity of psychiatric treatment. Arata kept playing at his usual level and became meijin three nonconsecutive times, during which time he and Chihaya had carried something on, until it fell apart. Chihaya had worked a lot of odd jobs, including a lot of assistant coaching gigs she got due to the physical education teaching degree program she was part of at the university. It was taking her quite a while to get through the four-year degree, but she had an excellent academic record of which she seemed barely aware. Most of the time, she was her usual super-energetic, positive, inquisitive self. So why was she coming apart? She'd seemed okay just three days ago, when he really spent time with her last.

Oh well, he thought. I'll probably find out tomorrow. She's really not that great at hiding things.

Taichi wandered into the living room, turned on a standing reading lamp, and pulled a book off the shelf. It was a beautiful teal clothbound volume of a recent edition of the Hundred Poets. He hadn't even cracked it open; it had just been a clear bargain at an estate sale he'd wandered into a month before. Gently, he set it on his crossed right leg and began slowly reading the poems, his tired eyes burning and blurring even as they registered meaning. Such beautiful, deep poems, so strangely resonant with his teen years despite being courtly poems written hundreds of years before. Some of them he knew so well that he could barely gather their meaning any longer; the Chihayaburu card was like that. No, he thought, this isn't my life. The time I thought it was my life is gone. These are beautiful poems and those were beautiful years. But something else, someone else has to tell the tale, now. There is no referent except for my testimony to life. I don't know if I can tell the right stories in the right way, but I'm all I have.

A cold wind had blown the two days of rain away, clearing the sky but seeming to freeze down the town in the grip of approaching winter. Taichi cursed himself for not wearing a better coat, because the good coat he was carrying was not for him. It was for Chihaya. He was worried that Chihaya would stagger off the train in shorts and a tee shirt. His guess was not far off. She was dressed warmly enough, if it weren't cold outside. She wasn't wearing a coat, sweater, poncho, blanket, or anything like that. He stood on the platform as she stepped off the train, looking feverishly around for him. She's so cute, Taichi thought. She's so funny. He waved. She saw him, gave him a big smile, and ran over to him.

"Welcome home," Taichi said. "Here." He put the good coat on her and buttoned it up, as though she were a child. It's how she was acting, so he had a strong hunch it was a good idea to play along.

Chihaya suddenly wobbled and nearly tripped over her own legs, on the verge of falling down. Taichi caught her and held her. "I'm sorry, Taichi," she said, "that's been happening a lot."

Taichi suddenly realized that she looked bad. She was pale and bony, with big bags under her eyes. It was just hard to tell when she smiled. He guided her to a bench and made her sit down, pulled a little diagnostic kit from his coat pocket, and took out a plastic strip thermometer and a little flashlight.

Chihaya shook her head. "No, Taichi, there's nothing wrong with me. You don't have to do that."

"Hmm," Taichi said. "You're disoriented, you're emotionally and cognitively volatile, and you seem to be staggering around from vertigo. Of course there's nothing wrong with you. Just be quiet. The injections and the scalpel will hurt, but nothing else will."

Chihaya's eyes widened for a few seconds before she realized that he was messing with her. She gently slapped the top of his head, tousling his hair.

He put the thermometer in her mouth, waited, and checked it. No temperature. He took the flashlight and shone it in her eyes, to her great annoyance. Nothing wrong there, nothing wrong with her brain any more than there usually was. Finally, he sat back on his heel in front of her and nodded. "I know what it is," he said. "It's obvious."

"What?" she asked.

"You'll find out," he said. "Come on, let's go eat lunch. I'm hungry. Some of the guys in my program swear by a ramen shop a block from here."

Chihaya shrugged. "I don't know, I'm not really hungry."

"Give it a shot," Taichi said. "I'm buying. Anything on the menu is yours, as long as it doesn't cost any money."

The two of them began gabbing about absolutely nothing as they walked to the ramen shop and waited in line. It felt good not to say anything of importance. Chihaya told a bunch of stories from the club days that he actually didn't know, and he listened to all of them.

They sat at the counter and ordered, five minutes before giant bowls of ramen appeared before them, the firm gleaming noodles visible in soup sheening with oil and fat. Vegetables were swimming around with little pieces of roast pork. Taichi and Chihaya pitched into the food like wolves. Taichi finished first, looking carefully at Chihaya.

"Taichi, can I have another of these?" Chihaya asked.

"By all means," Taichi said.

Chihaya finished her second bowl of ramen and fell back in her chair, panting from the food orgy. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright, her lips redder.

"Chihaya," Taichi asked, "you haven't been eating, have you?"

"Not much," she admitted.

"Well you made yourself crazy by not eating," Taichi said. "If you do that for long enough, there's a chance you'll get used to feeling crazy."

Wide-eyed, Chihaya looked at him as she listened.

"Wanna pick up some ice cream on the way home?" she asked. "I do feel a lot better. I thought I was going crazy like Shinobu."

Taichi shook his head. "You don't have to be crazy like Shinobu to show that you empathize with her, Chihaya. She doesn't want that."

"I've been wanting to understand, Taichi," Chihaya said. "I've been trying to understand, and I just got upset and confused."

"By starving yourself."

"I guess so. That ramen is really good, anyway."

Chihaya went home with Taichi for the afternoon. Her place felt bad to her, permeated with confused and negative feelings. They watched soccer on TV from the safety of the couch and heckled coaches and players, drinking cold beer and eating handfuls of hot peanuts from the United States. Chihaya was happier than she had been for a long time, and she didn't want to leave.

"Taichi," she said after a couple of hours, "we need to talk."

"Okay," Taichi said, and turned off the television.

Chihaya scooted over and leaned against him, smiling. Her eyes were closed, but she was still awake. She wrapped an arm around the arm nearest her and snuggled into him. "Is this okay?" she asked.

"No," Taichi said, "I'll kick you out if you do that."

"Okay," Chihaya said, smiling and snuggling closer. "Taichi, I love you."

Taichi looked up at the ceiling. "I'm glad."

"No really," she said, "you are so precious to me."

Her words were slurring, suddenly. Taichi looked at her face. Her breath was slowing and her lips parting slightly as sleep approached. "I love you, Taichi."

"I love you too, Chihaya," he said. "I always will, until the end."

Her breath deepened and slowed, gradually, but her lips were moving and trying to say something.

"There was a time…", she said.

"Really?" Taichi asked softly.

"There…was a time. And…it was…a good time and I have always loved you, Taichi, with my whole heart, every…day… There was a time. Taichi."

There she went. Smiling, Taichi watched her descend into sleep, relieved of the pain and confusion that had brought her back to him again.

"There was a time, Chihaya. There is. It's our time."

Deep in her slumber, she heard what he said, because a definite smile emerged on her lovely mouth before she submerged again.

It's our time, whatever it may be, Taichi thought. And she's here with me. And at this particular moment, that's all on Earth I want.

2\. WHAT YOU CAN'T GIVE BACK

Dusk was changing into night. Orange light rimmed the buildings and distant hills and filled a trace of sky, but it would be gone in less than a minute. Chihaya walked the track with the first-year girl Tsubasa, holding her hand. Tsubasa alternately kept close and pulled back, moved forward willingly and tried to sink into the Earth. But as the principal had judged, Chihaya's openness and fundamental kindness gave the girl a moving shelter while the two of them were together. Tsubasa's beloved grandmother, who she had been living with after her parents died, had died of a stroke that morning.

Tsubasa would not talk and her eyes kept suddenly flaring wide and filling with tears. Chihaya kept her walking around and around the track. Finally, when the light was really gone, Chihaya walked the girl away from the school and toward the train station.

"Do you like karuta?" Chihaya asked.

Tsubasa nodded slightly, dragging slightly behind. She had to move forward, though, because Chihaya would not let go of her hand.

"Well," Chihaya said, "I'm taking you to spend some time at the karuta society I help run. Your aunt and uncle know you'll be there and they'll come pick you up."

Tsubasa nodded.

"You're not going to be alone," Chihaya said. "People are making sure that you're okay until your aunt and uncle come."

Tsubasa nodded again, tears starting and stopping with each shift of transient consciousness.

They rode the train for a couple of miles to the gathering place of the Mizusawa karuta society. Two years ago, Harada-sensei retired with his wife to a small town four hours south of Tokyo and essentially assigned Chihaya to take over, and the society's location had changed as well. After a few minutes of riding, Chihaya saw that Tsubasa's teeth had started chattering and that she was doubling over into a foetal coil. Chihaya put her arms around the girl and held her close until they got where they were going, giving her as much warmth as she could while squeezing her into a bundle. By the time they arrived at their destination, Tsubasa was something like normal. But she wouldn't be normal for a very long time.

Chihaya took Tsubasa's hand again and led her off the train and to the platform, where Sumire was waiting, still in stylish work clothes, by one of the exits.

"This is Sumire," Chihaya said.

"I'm Sumire," Sumire said, and smiled at Tsubasa. Tsubasa made a little smile back.

"We're walking two blocks to the Mizusawa society headquarters, which is where your uncle and aunt have been told to pick you up." Chihaya checked her little old-fashioned watch. "That's about forty-five minutes from now."

Tsubasa nodded.

Chihaya took the information about the pick-up out of her purse, after releasing Tsubasa's hand. Sumire took Tsubasa's other hand and held it until they reached the gathering place of their karuta society.

The only person there was Sudou, who was busy preparing the cards and other paraphernalia for practice later on. Without realizing it, he had become a gentler person over the years, less inclined to cause hurt intentionally, but his tongue was still savage by habit. Unfortunately, he had never figured Sumire into his future. Sudou obviously began to say something awful, and before he could do it Sumire crossed over and twisted his nose hard to the left. "Gah!" he said, and stepped back. Sumire quietly talked to him, eyes glancing toward Tsubasa and his eyes following the cue. He nodded.

Sudou came over and introduced himself politely to Tsubasa. She smiled feebly and nodded her head.

"Would you like to play karuta?" he asked.

Tsubasa nodded. Twice now she had affirmed that she knew and even liked the game; this was something that Chihaya couldn't ignore even if she should, in the circumstances. Chihaya watched the girl wander to a play space with Sudou, who was speaking to her gently. I wonder whether he has a sister, Chihaya thought. As it happened, he didn't turn on the recorded readings for a game. Instead, he and Tsubasa sat in position on either side and talked. Shock was still taking mercy on the girl, gracing her with oblivion between burning moments of remembering. Sudou was speaking softly to her about something. They never started playing cards. Sumire walked over to Chihaya, who was looking at them.

"He'd be a great guy if he didn't talk," Sumire said.

Chihaya made a stifled laugh. "Maybe someone can put that on his memorial stone, someday. 'Now he's a good guy,' because he doesn't talk.'"

Society members slowly filled up the room and put themselves in different configurations. Sudou escorted Tsubasa back to Chihaya and Sumire. "She doesn't really feel like playing," he said. He looked at Tsubasa. "Right?"

Tsubasa nodded her head.

About twenty minutes later, the door opened and a man and a woman in business clothes came in. They went over to Tsubasa and the woman hugged the girl.

"Thank you for taking care of Tsubasa in this time of need," her uncle said.

Chihaya smiled. "I was glad to do it. She's a great girl. Oh, wait a moment, I'll be right back." She ran to where she had set her purse, rummaged around it, and came out with a little palm-sized package. She slipped something out of it and quickly went back to Tsubasa and the aunt and uncle.

"Here," Chihaya said. "This is my card. I only give this to friends."

Tsubasa looked at the side of the card with Chihaya's name and correspondence information. Then, on a whim, she flipped it. It was a compressed facsimile of the seventeenth poem of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. Tsubasa stared at it for six or seven seconds, grasped the pun, and burst out in happy laughter.

"You got it!" said Chihaya. She glanced meaningfully at the aunt and uncle and said to Tsubasa, "If you need to talk with someone, call me anytime, and if you need to see me, I'll try as hard as I can to make it happen. I want you to be happy. Okay?"

Tsubasa's eyes filmed over and she gave Chihaya a fragile, brief embrace. As the Tsubasa and her uncle and aunt went out, the aunt whispered to Chihaya, "Thank you so much for taking care of our niece. We weren't sure what to do, so we asked the principal for help."

"I was glad to do it," Chihaya said, and stood watching them leave until they were completely through the door.

Someone came up behind her, and she looked to see who it was.

Sumire looked at her with soft eyes. "I love you, senpai. You're so good with us little ones."

"Don't call me senpai! Come on."

Chihaya blushed deep red but let Sumire hug her.

It was time to see how the gameplay was going with the various groupings. The poem readings periodically droned into earshot, echoing a little on the unpaneled ceiling. Sudou leaned against a far wall, watching. Whatever his bad qualities were, and they were probably most of his qualities, he loved karuta with all his heart and would stick with it until the end. That makes him my friend, thought Chihaya. When it comes down to it, I'm very easy. If only it was easy to love the ones I really love. Karuta gutters out when things are not a game. Don't think about that.

"It's funny," Chihaya said to Sumire, "Tsubasa never said anything."

Sumire nodded, face serious. "There aren't any words in the place she is in right now."

Chihaya was feeling annoyed, again, that she didn't have much money, although she couldn't have been luckier thus far since high school, due to her family's support and some of the scholarships that had helped get her through university. So she was trying not to be an ingrate. But the walls of the tiny apartment really did seem to close in at times, especially when she was feeling anxious and lost, and the forest of wires that hung from countless poles beyond the living room and kitchen windows sometimes kept her from being certain that there actually was a sky. A couple of months had passed since Sumire had moved in with her fiancee to live with him in his nice place in Rappongi Heights and Chihaya had to move in here. But it was better than living in her family home, which would be embarassing enough, and commuting between there and Chiba City two times a day with a hard day of teaching PE to high school students. Teaching was far more stressful than she thought, largely because she could see in the students' struggles her own from that time, some of which remained unresolved. So she had this little apartment equidistant between the school and the rail station, paid for by her, and she just had to keep from feeling caged, when her nerves started jumping, and she felt like doing something, anything, to make years of confusion and pain go away.

The light was about to die down outside and Chihaya was reading through a book on the history of karuta. The phone rang and she answered it.

"Ayase-sensei," a girl's voice said.

Chihaya sat up fast, alert. She hadn't heard the girl say a word, but it could not have been anyone else.

"Tsubasa-chan?" she asked.

"Yes. This is Tsubasa. I wanted to come visit you in Chiba but somehow I ended up in Rappongi. I am having trouble understanding words, right now. There are many people. So I wanted to call you."

"Tsubasa-chan, where did you come from?"

"I left my aunt and uncle's house in Fujisawa and came here."

"Do they know where you are?" Chihaya asked, increasingly worried.

"Yes, I called them when I came here and told them I would call you. They were very upset with me but glad I could call you. They will call you and the principal, I know. I like it there but had to come back."

"Why, Tsubasa-chan?"

"I do not want to leave my grandmother."

Your grandmother is dead, Chihaya thought, but for once she kept a thought from making it to her mouth.

"Ayase-sensei, I know my grandmother died but that's not what I mean. Don't worry about me."

"Don't worry about you? How can I not worry about you?" Chihaya scolded. "I want you to stay in the station. Don't move. It may take me quite a while before I can get to you, but don't move. I'm going to pick you up. Tell me what I just said."

"Stay in the station, remain immobile. You will come to get me, although it may be a considerable period of time."

Chihaya nodded. "Perfect. I'm going to the train station right now. I want you to call your aunt and uncle right now and tell them I'm coming and that I'll call them soon. Do you understand that it could be the police talking with you instead of me, that they could have called the police out of panic? I'm sure your leaving frightened them badly."

Silence. "Yes, and I'm sorry. I love them very much. But I could not leave my grandmother."

It took Chihaya an impatient hour and a half to get to Tsubasa. Tsubasa sat in the station as commanded and smiled as Chihaya approached. Chihaya overcame her self-restraint and tightly embraced the runaway girl.

Chihaya, holding onto Tsubasa's shoulders, leaned back an arm's length from her and looked her straight in the eyes. "You absolutely cannot do this again."

Tsubasa lowered her eyes in the clearly telegraphed teenager message, 'I'm sorry but I'd do it again.'"

"I have called your aunt and uncle and the principal. All of them are okay with you staying with me for a couple of days, if you'd like. They think you trust me, is that right?"

Suddenly, Tsubasa gave her a huge, radiant smile and said, "Of course I do."

Chihaya's heart melted like soft ice cream in the sun; how can you defend yourself against that? But she took Tsubasa's hand and led her away to the station to a ramen restaurant she had heard a lot about. The girl was very hungry. She hadn't even put snacks in the little school backpack that she was using for luggage. At the restaurant, Chihaya ate and watched Tsubasa eat with eyes down and far away.

Chihaya had called Tsubasa's aunt and uncle during the train trip. The girl's aunt did the talking, openly weeping. She said the girl was like a daughter since her sister died while Tsubasa was very small and she didn't know why Tsubasa would want to run away without telling them. Chihaya told her that Tsubasa had told her that she loved them very much, but that grief did different people different kinds of harm and maybe for Tsubasa, the power to leave unannounced was something that comforted her and she didn't realize how cruel it was to others.

Then, the aunt asked Chihaya if she would be willing to keep Tsubasa and take care of her until they could figure out what to do, and they'd reimburse her for anything. Chihaya agreed, as long as they didn't reimburse her for anything. Tsubasa's aunt said that it wouldn't be more than two days, and that she was deeply grateful. After talking with Tsubasa's aunt, Chihaya called the principal, who was very relieved, both because he cared about Tsubasa and he wouldn't have to talk to the police.

When they got back on the train to go back to Chihaya's place, Chihaya continued not to let Tsubasa's hand go, unless she had to do it. Tsubasa did not mind; in fact, she sought Chihaya's hand when Chihaya had to break the circuit. All the way there, they had no words for each other. Tsubasa quietly looked out the windows, occasionally stirring when she saw something familiar, and Chihaya was taking inventory of the words she had that might help with this situation.

The next day, Tsubasa got permission to attend the school as she had done before. Her friends, who had missed her, had heard nothing about why she had left. Chihaya thought that was a bad oversight for the administration to make, but once the kids were together again, it didn't matter because no harm was done. Chihaya taught her daily round of classes and afterschool athletic activities, capping it off with paperwork in the faculty room. She would happily have taught another couple of classes if she didn't have to do the paperwork. But she did.

Sumire came over that night with take-out and a couple of DVDs with foolish anime on them, cheerful but extremely tired. The executive job she had picked up after university was wearing on her. Sumire had met her fiancee at the new job, which was great, but she worked as long as he did, ten hours or more a day, developing marketing strategies for the cosmetic industry niche she was in while he directed commercial films about the fashion industry. When she heard about Tsubasa, she drove her fiancee's car to Chihaya's place, climbed the stairs, and let herself in.

"Ta-da!" she announced, went into the kitchen, and plated up the take-out Hunan food. She put three plates and silverware and napkins on the skinny coffee table in front of the couch, and found a place for the drinks everyone said they had wanted. Chihaya sat on the couch with Tsubasa in the middle, and Sumire came over to scrunch Tsubasa between them. "I want to sit with Tsubasa, too!" she said. Tsubasa grinned. Ten minutes into the movie Sumire started after everyone began eating, both she and Chihaya somehow turned, as though synchronized, to find that Tsubasa was sitting upright, eyes open, but clearly asleep.

"Wow, senpai, I remember when you did that after a match. You'd fall asleep with your eyes open," Sumire said.

"Do not call me senpai," Chihaya said, resignedly. "Tsubasa, sweetheart, wake up."

Tsubasa came to with a start and looked around with a daze.

Chihaya got her up from the couch, took her to the bathroom to make sure she did what she needed, and put her in the bed in the little bedroom barely separated from the living room. Tsubasa was asleep as soon as Chihaya pulled the covers up.

Chihaya sat near Sumire on the couch. "She said that she can't leave her grandmother."

Sumire furrowed her brow.

"Tsubasa says not to worry because it's strange, but she just can't leave her grandmother. She said that tomorrow or the next day might be the right time, but leaving her grandmother was not something she can do. She knows her grandmother is dead and cremated and she doesn't believe that her grandmother is a ghost or anything. She just talks about not leaving her grandmother as though it were obvious, not requiring an explanation because the meaning is only hers."

Sumire nodded, pulling a bottle of wine and a couple of plastic wine glasses and a corkscrew out of her bag. "She's sane enough, though, and it sounds as though she's unlikely to run away again. Right?"

Chihaya nodded. "Tsubasa told me that her grandmother wouldn't need to have anyone stay here after tomorrow, very likely." She took the glass of wine from Sumire, smiling her thanks. "So that's that. I don't think I'll ever know what she meant. But that's okay, I guess. Knowing that you can't leave someone, even if they're not there to be left."

Sumire looked at her.

"Chihaya," Sumire said, "I don't want to make you feel bad, but I have to ask. Why are you still trying to reach Taichi, when he doesn't want you to do it and even you don't want to reach him? It's been this way for a couple of years. What is it you want from him? He still cares for you, but he's moving forward in his life as best he can. Do you know why you can't leave him alone or leave him behind?"

Chihaya recoiled from the onslaught of frank speech, took a sip of her wine, and lay back at her end of the couch. "Why do you ask? I mean, Taichi and I are friends. I still talk with Arata when he comes here."

"Yes, and you and Arata always make Taichi go out with you together. Every time. Chihaya, it's strange. Think about this. What do you and Arata have that you want to share with Taichi? Or are you trying to feel better about something together, with him? The reason I'm asking these things is Taichi talked to Masuo at lunch yesterday… They're pretty good friends, somehow. Taichi told Masuo that he did not understand what you and Arata want and that it hurts to act like he does understand."

Chihaya said, "I just can't leave Taichi. I can't leave him alone. I know it's awful. I don't know why, but it's true."

"So Tsubasa isn't so strange, is she? With her not being able to leave her grandmother. Except it makes sense for her, right? It's been less than a week since her grandmother died. But it's been forever since whatever happened that makes you not leave Taichi."

Chihaya drank the wine in the glass and held it out for more. "Yes, you're right. Arata and I hurt him badly, although I'm still not sure how. But we both know we did."

Sumire shook her head. "You really don't know?"

"Arata and I got together after Arata beat Taichi in the meichin finalist matches."

"So how did you hurt him? Why can't you leave it alone?"

Chihaya shook her head. "I don't know. His dreams were broken, maybe, but they're back together. He's been with women he likes since then," she said glaring at Sumire, "and he has a real life in medical school and moving forward. Maybe it's guilt, I don't know. Arata and I both share it, though. It's too heavy. It makes no sense."

Sumie nodded, pouring more wine in the glass after Chihaya tossed down the second glass. "Yet you can't leave Taichi."

Chihaya was suddenly struck with fatigue and a sense that no matter what she did, she would never be able to catch up to her best dreams for herself, would never do more than scratch away at the surface of things that didn't need scratching. Exhaustion descended on her with the alcohol and she fell asleep with her mouth open, looking up at the ceiling.

When Chihaya woke up, she was on the couch under a thin blanket and a sofa pillow under her head. She felt woozy, disinclined to go to the bathroom before going back to sleep. Sumire must have tucked her in and left. They had been talking about… Yes, what they always talked about.

Chihaya felt back asleep, or into some crack between being asleep and awake, where every element of the room seemed like a dream and every dream that drifted through was concrete and easily located in the room.

She heard a noise at the foot of the bed and looked down to it.

Tsubasa was sitting near her feet, smiling at her. "Ayase-sensei, are you sleeping well?"

"Not particularly, Tsubasa-chan. Why aren't you sleeping?"

"I am. I'm sleeping in you."

The hair stood up on the back of Chihaya's neck, but she was frozen immobile, staring at Tsubasa's sweet smiling face.

"I'm sleeping in you, Ayase-sensei, so I'm here to help you with the questions you couldn't answer when I wasn't. It's about leaving. Someone you love, who you can't leave even though he wants you to. Is that right?"

Chihaya closed her eyes and nodded. "Yes, Tsubasa-chan. It's an old story."

"Yet so new, Ayase-sensei, I can see it happening to you right now, in this room, right now as we speak. I see him leaning down above you, as though he wishes to protect you, a beautiful man."

Tears spilled down Chihaya's cheeks.

Tsubasa stood up straight, looking straight into Chihaya's eyes.

"Ayase-sensei, you must know something. When you cannot leave something, it is because you put a magnet there that makes you cling. It is a sound you send out to echo and return to who you are. The beautiful man there… The magnet you have set means nothing to the two of you. Because you took something from him and cannot give it back."

"I'm sure there's a way I can give it back," Chihaya said.

"No I'm sorry," Tsubasa said, tears gleaming like starlight at the corners of her eyes. "You stole something from him that he already owned, something that was his, not love or hope but something he carried with him, shaped, made his own. He would have shared it with you but you stole it from him. And when you steal something from someone, you can never give it back."

Chihaya started to sob, now, holding onto the couch as she pushed herself up. "Why can't I give it back? I want to give it back to him and say I'm sorry I took it, why can't I do that?"

"Because when you steal something, it shatters into dust."

Chihaya sat up violently and swung her feet down to the floor. No one else was in the room. She walked over to the bedroom door and listened to Tsubasa's gentle breath, in and out, as she lay sleeping in bed.

"She knows what it means to be able to leave or not," Chihaya told herself, "no matter how strange that is. But I guess I have no choice. I cannot leave and he has gone away. And I stole…"

She almost had it, almost seized it, almost knew what it was of Taichi's she had stolen and broken in the theft. But it slipped away. The light from the street, slivered by wires on poles, cut stencils in the shadow of the living room. Her heart caught. She breathed in, out, in. She would never leave, would never stay. That was all there was to it.

3\. THE LONG DRIVE

By the time the rain turned to snow during the car's climb toward Nagano, realizing that he was already one hour late and that this trip might go deep into the night, Taichi was questioning his judgment. First, he hadn't checked the weather forecast at all. Second, he hadn't factored in the mountains when he envisioned a pleasant drive across the Honshu mainland, especially the fact that it frequently snows in the mountains during island-wide storms. Third, he'd left Tokyo a little after noon, assuming that he would get to Fukui by dark. Why he chose these options of incompetence, he did not know. As always, though, it almost certainly had to do with a visit to his friend Arata, Arata's lively family, and a town heavy with someone else's memories.

Why is it that I visit the friends I never really want to see and neglect the ones I always want to see? Taichi wondered. For instance, he literally only spoke with Suou at coffee shops and they didn't share much about their personal lives. But there's no way around it, with Arata. If I didn't visit him, Arata would descend on me someday in Tokyo, and I'd have to go out with Chihaya and him for a little reunion downtown. Why did they think he liked that, after he let them know he didn't, so many times? There was probably no answer. But as always, he'd let them push him around. So he avoided that by taking this ill-considered trip to Arata's door.

It was time to stall a bit, and he was hungry. Taichi kept his eyes on the side of the road, still visible through flurrying snow, until he saw what looked like a decent non-franchise restaurant back in a stand of pines. He pulled off the road and went back to the place, which looked as though it might be closed, with an empty parking lot, but announced it was open with a big sign in front. He went in and looked around. The ramen restaurant was very small, sparsely decorated, empty, warm, and filled with an ecstasy of food fragrances. Taichi smiled as he sat at a little table near the front counter. Sumire had emphatically informed him at lunch the other day that he had to eat the Nagano buckwheat soba in Nagano, and Taichi was in no mood to argue with her even in his mind.

A short, pretty woman who looked as though she was in her fifties took his order and served him. The man doing the cooking was visible in the kitchen beyond the server counter, and waved happily when he caught Taichi looking.

The buckwheat soba was superb, firm and entertainingly slick, with a medley of artistically sliced seasonal vegetables in the soup. The dark green tea brought to his table was robust and invigorating, and at the end of the meal he was ready for the adventure of wasabi ice cream. This was not something he felt comfortable about eating, but he had also been commanded to eat it, and it turned out to be really good.

I like it here, Taichi thought. I bet they'd hire me. I could live in Nagano and make and serve soba noodles and drive around all year looking for magical ingredients. I could cash out and that would let me live for two years, easy. I could abandon the truly depressing job of researching heavy metal neurotoxicity and developmental disorders in relation to mitochondrial dysfunction and stop fighting my way through medical school. I could meet some extremely cute country girl living in the city, and we could make a lot of soba- and wasabi-fed children from having wild sex every night. We would live near the mountains and near the water and we'd participate in all the local festivals. Who am I kidding. Chihaya and Arata would find me and they'd bug me here.

Time to get back on the road.

After praising and thanking the man and woman at the restaurant, Taichi went out to his car and climbed in, with some effort. It was a mid-range Lexus SUV, a curvy cross between a sedan and an assault vehicle, with decent clearance and all wheel drive. It was clean and new and cost a lot to rent. Outside the windshield, the weather-born darkness of late afternoon was changing, alarmingly, as snow fell more heavily and the sky hovered overhead like an unpaid bill. Taichi turned on a radio/GPS contraption that talked to him constantly in the voice of an old policeman, letting him know both where he was and what was happening with the weather. What it was telling him about at that moment was steady snow for the next fifty miles.

What am I doing, Taichi thought. Why am I going to see Arata, anyway? It's not too late to turn back and just say it was a successful outing to get some great soba.

Taichi pulled out onto the road and drove at a pleasant pace for twenty miles through falling snow that wasn't light and wasn't heavy. The heavy-duty tires gripped the road like a baby gripping candy and the four-wheel drive held the vehicle steady. Taichi knew better than to push his luck and go fast. Ultimately, ice and snow don't negotiate; they will win any dispute involving a vehicle capable of sliding for great distances into ditches or off cliffs. He wasn't about to pick a fight with ice and snow and gravity all at once. Growing up with Chihaya had taught him that general principle. No matter what, Chihaya always wins. During her relationship with Arata, showing up on Taichi's doorstep every day or so to hang out with him and talk? Done. Calling him when she was half-starved and afraid for Shinobu's mental health, as in calling him because he was always sure to be there? Done. Taking notes on his girlfriends and spreading the word to all their friends, with Sumire reporting to him every time Chihaya did that? Done. And he, Taichi, protested all this and did everything he could to stop it but still folded like a tent in wind? Done. Chihaya always wins. Just like the snow on the road beyond the windshield would win. Just like the ice forming on the road as the temperature dropped below freezing would win. For him, it wasn't a question of winning. Right now, facing the darkening weather, and all through the past and probably into the future, his would be the question of getting from one point to another.

Taichi reached over to his phone where it hung cradled above the dashboard, touched it a few times, and listened as a connection was made and rings became audible. Soon, someone answered the phone.

"Taichi," Arata said. "How are things?"

"Well," Taichi said, "I'll probably be coming in late. There is some serious weather where I'm going, so I'm taking it easy."

"Good," Arata said. "Don't take any chances. If you want to stop somewhere on the way, let me know and we'll expect you tomorrow morning."

Taichi agreed and rang off. He reached without looking into the console compartment to his right, where debris such as drink bottles and food crumbs and receipts was already gathering. The thumb drive was wedged in, but it came out. He put the drive into a USB port on the stereo and relaxed.

Yanagi Nagi's voice swept through and filled the vehicle. Taichi loved her celestial melodic tone, intelligent phrasing, and changing dynamics. Song after song seized his mind and heart and raised his spirit higher, to where he could look down on the past and present in longing and forgiveness. He especially loved the Supercell ballad "Watashi e", two minutes of glorious yearning and despair that never failed to call back into mind the long history of his love for Chihaya and his sympathy for her own disappointments. He loved how, in that song, Nagi leads in with a keen and level beauty, like brilliant red autumn leaves fallen and drifting on a sunlit river, then sings out with a sudden terrible intensity as the narrator recognizes that the past only lives in her mind, and not long even there:

*

Snow fell steadily in the increasing darkness. Taichi lost track of the miles. The road was on a plateau of some sort, high up but at least not going up and down. Occasionally a pinpoint of light would appear behind him and a car would pass a moment later, or he saw someone's taillights growing larger in front of him. He was getting jittery about the semi trucks, which even in good weather wouldn't have seen him and in this weather could pretty much solve all his problems in the worst of ways.

Just as the road stopped being visible under the tires and Taichi was deciding which crawl he wanted to slow to, he saw a turning set of lights in the near distance, a large vehicle entering the road. He decelerated to reduce the chance of crashing into whatever it was, and on approaching it realized to his delight that it was a snowplow, a public utility one instead of an old farmer's truck with a dubiously attached wing blade. At that exact moment, according to a sign reflected in his headlights, came a long 4% incline, so Taichi happily shifted to a lower forward gear and settled in behind the snowplow. Trying not to fall asleep from the monotonous view and the breeze from the car's heater, Taichi remembered something as he watched the snow-covered asphalt scrape in front of him.

Chihaya and he were in the fourth grade, little and filled with fire. Both of them were with his family on a ski trip, spending a night in a lodge and playing around for a day. Chihaya was in full-force cuteness mode; even his mother was smiling at her. He laughed at his friend in the back seat, where she squirmed around like a little bear itching to tumble and run wherever she could. As on this trip, the trip into the mountains lasted past dark, and when Taichi's parents went into the lodge Chihaya grabbed his hand and dragged him toward a big slope topped with a ridge that trailed down near them. The sky was clear, the moon almost scarily full and bright, and Chihaya's face was suddenly not only cute but piercingly lovely in the reflected light, leaving Taichi anxiously aware, in the acuity of childhood, that she would become someone whose eyes alone would be able to bring him to his knees. So he followed her as she dragged him in and out of moonlight shadow, up the ridge, both of them tripping over roots and sliding toward the edge, followed her without a word, devastated to the core of his young soul by her beauty.

"You idiot!" he finally managed to shout, as they reached the upper part of the ridge and looked down the steep, sheer snow slope that fanned out toward the lodge at the bottom. "What are you…"

"Ah-haha, Taichi!" Chihaya said, and disappearing from a view so suddenly that he felt his heart stop, she headed down the slope on her back. "Taiii-chiiii," she yelled as she slid, "Come on, Taiii-chiiii!"

He ran over to the edge and looked down. She was sliding fast across the level ground at the foot of the slope, still yelling "Taiiiiii-chiiiii!"

Oh Chihaya, he thought, looking over the edge and watching her jump up and start making fun of him, trying to get him to jump.

So he did. He slid and tumbled, tumbled and slid, unharmed but shaken, periodically packed with snow under where his clothes allowed it, until he lay shaken below, looking up at the moon and listening to Chihaya as she laughed and chattered beside him, ignoring the distant angry yells of his mother. Why move? Why ever move from where he lay with this crazy girl, under the reading-light moon?

On level ground now, the road ran before him bare of snow, the snowplow long turned back. Rain fell steadily, small drops blowing in a slanting wind. A song his uncle played him once played under the rim of his consciousness, loud enough to hear where his ear registered the most distant and longed-for calls to his soul.

*

The rain and wind ended on the last stretch to Fukui, a few miles west of the turn where the road ran north and away from Kyoto. The sky had gone clear and sheening surfaces reflected occasional artificial lights. Taichi turned off into a rest stop parking lot, climbed out of the car, and leaned against it to look at the sky. Heavy bundles of stars hung, clear and sharp, between dissipating rags of cloud. Wow, he thought. What a crawl. A seven hour trip was promising to turn into ten, all for a visit to a man who was a friend in the strangest of ways, a man he had grown to know better through the twelve years since their real friendship, the pulsing star of possibility, went out and vanished from their sky. In addition to that, this man tended to come in a package deal with the only woman Taichi had ever really loved, a woman who was as persistently invasive and impervious to distancing as the man, and just as hard to escape. What made it worse was that the two of them had abandoned him in the worst of possible ways twelve years back, apparently not knowing they had abandoned him at all.

Is that what friendship is? Taichi wondered. His best friend, Sumire, wasn't like that. They were always glad to see each other, and her husband was always glad to see him and vice versa, and they didn't have to keep making the meetings happen, because all three friends were just there, on Earth together, trusting that the situation would remain until it no longer did. Chihaya and Arata acted as though they had to have proof that they existed in the world with Taichi. I'm not giving you much more of that proof, Taichi silently said to them. You're going to take it on faith that I'm there, that I know you're there. After this, it's over. Both of you will be optional. I can't let you be more than you are, any more. Each of you will have a handful of times you'll see me from now on. Arata, this is one of yours.

Taichi closed his eyes. Is this a bad thing? Is my heart turning to stone? No. Sometimes you have to say goodbye for good, even before death makes it happen. I'm sorry, Chihaya. Love runs out.

Taichi drove fast to Arata's house, which sat to the south in woods a couple of miles shy of Fukui. Arata and Yuu owned a large traditional Japanese house bought with money Arata inherited after his parents died in a car crash five years back. How terrible, Taichi thought, a house as a consolation prize for parents. But it was a place for a family to be, a good place to make a home. That's probably exactly what Arata's parents would have wanted as a legacy. Maybe that's what his mom would want, with an airstrip thrown in.

Taichi drove a gravel path to the front of the house and parked on the side of the drive where a playscape hovered like some kind of science fiction monster, gleaming with rain. Attack of the killer playscape, Taichi thought. Attack of the car-eating killer playscape. I guess I'll be walking from now on.

He went to the front door, paused for a few seconds, and pushed the doorbell button.

The door opened only moments later, and Yuu stood smiling before him. She is one of those people, Taichi reflected, who becomes very pretty when she's happy, and she had been happy for a while, having silently waited for Arata, planning and executing strategy and tactics, and captured him eight years ago. Their three kids, each separated by two years, were either laughing or arguing somewhere in the house. Taichi nodded and said, "It's good to see you again. I'm sorry to drop in on you so late. A storm intervened."

Yuu laughed. "No problem. Arata has been waiting for you patiently." Her expression quickly changed, no longer pretty, as she shouted into the house. "You three! Another sound and you'll be stuck in the house for a week!" The background noise immediately disappeared. She shook her head. "I'll take you back to Arata and bring you some dinner soon."

Taichi nodded gratefully, not even pretending that she didn't have to go to the trouble. He was ravenous. After a side trip to the bathroom, he walked behind Yuu to a wide empty room in the back of the house, a tatami-matted space that clearly served as a karuta playing area for the society to which Arata had belonged since he was a child. The room was thoroughly lit by a set of bright downlights distributed evenly across the ceiling. Arata sat far back in the room at a lacquered table surrounded by throw pillows. Behind him stretched a long table with plant arrangements at either end, with a framed photograph of Arata's grandfather holding Arata, set dead center. Taichi looked at the photograph as he approached the table, then looked at the living Arata's smiling face. All Arata's grandfather wanted was to free him through the power of play, Taichi thought sadly, and instead Arata has locked himself into a cage with only his grandfather's memory for company, planning never to come out for anyone among the living. Taichi felt he had never left it. This was the door of the cage.

"Taichi," Arata said as Taichi sat across from him. In a shocking juxtaposition, Arata's face lined up with his grandfather's face in the photograph, identical in features and expression. My God, Taichi thought. I can't come here, anymore. Even the domestic kimonos were the same. Yuu must really love you, Taichi thought, because this is one scary room.

"Thank you for coming," Arata said. "I'm sorry it's not more of a social visit, but I really need your professional expertise. Some troubling things have been happening." His voice gradually lowered as he spoke, as though he could possibly evade Yuu's hearing.

Taichi sat down on one of the pillows, nodding. "What's happening?" he asked. So this was why he was invited; there was clearly no reason for pleasantries. Yuu carried in a food tray, which she set before him. Delighted, he recognized it as Volga rice, a bed of curried rice embedded in an omelette and topped with crisp barbecue pork. This was a signature Fukui dish, and Yuu had clearly meant to prepare it for the dinner Taichi had not been able to attend. "Thank you, Yuu," Taichi said sincerely, looking up at her. "This looks absolutely delicious."

She nodded, crossed over, and sat beside Arata. Arata was startled. He had not expected his wife to be at the meeting he had planned. Taichi laughed inwardly. Just try to kick her out, he thought.

Taichi and the two heads of household chatted pleasantly about any number of things, especially the long and ominous journey Taichi had successfully made. When Taichi finished eating, he tossed down the rest of what tasted like exceptionally fine tea and put everything on the tray. Yuu carried the tray out and came back to sit beside Arata again, as Taichi and Arata locked eyes and exchanged a primitive wordless communication that neither of them could have described, even if they had to. It sent a jolt through Taichi's spine. Arata's eyes were still, cold, and filled with bottomless fear.

Arata picked up an expensive accordion binder latched with string and spool from beside him on the right and slid it over to Taichi. Taichi opened it and removed at least twenty crisp white pages covered with official print, with some imaging readouts attached. He put on his rimless glasses and scanned through everything, then looked up at Arata.

"About a month ago I started having balance problems while playing," Arata said. "I went to my doctor. Apparently the strokes that killed my grandfather may have come from a hereditary illness that I may have."

"Moyamoya Disease," Taichi interrupted, a little rudely, as he quickly gathered information from the detailed medical report and scan readouts. "Is that what they said it is? Because that's what it is. It's primarily a condition of Japanese people."

Arata's eyebrows went up, and Yuu sat pale and still beside him. "They said it was a strong possibility," he said.

"Here," Taichi said, holding up an X-ray translation of an MRI image. "It hits at thirty most of the time, our age." He traced a couple of cloudy regions on the picture of Arata's brain. "These are masses of compensatory vessels your body created to keep blood moving past vessels that no longer work."

"Okay," Arata said quietly.

"From the dates of the different parts of the report and the looks of this, if you get surgery at a good place in the next month or so, you'll almost certainly be alright. Don't wait, unless you want to join your grandfather in his illness as well as his karuta. I'll get in touch with your doctor and refer you to a good surgeon, if you'd like."

Arata stared at the floor. Taichi waited for a response. Yuu put a hand on Arata's waist and waited as he kept staring at the floor, audibly sobbing. Involuntarily, Taichi's eyes filled with tears that he swept away.

"You'll be alright," Taichi said.

Arata looked up, wiping his eyes. "My doctor was extremely impressed that you were helping me. You're famous. He seemed to want to make the report look really good."

Taichi smiled. "I'm good with brains."

Arata nodded. "Okay. So tell me what I have to do."

Taichi gave him a short rundown of the process Arata faced, from advanced diagnostics to surgery to post-op to the long recovery. He explained the advantages and disadvantages of different sorts of brain surgery, and which ones he would recommend for the problem Arata was facing. Then he explained the various specializations of different neurosurgeon groups and gave Arata a list of questions to give doctors at each stage of the process. You sat listening carefully, absorbing everything, her stern mousy face scrunched up. Taichi felt a sudden, powerful rush of affection and respect for her. She was a good one. Arata's luck held with wives, at least.

Arata left the room, most likely to be by himself for a few minutes. Taichi sat silently at the table, thinking the conversation over.

"He," Yuu said, "hates himself because of you. This won't help much if he stays that way. It will get him in the end."

Taichi was genuinely shocked. "What did I do to make him hate himself?"

"He hates himself for something he did to you."

Let me count the ways, Taichi thought, but he wisely did not say it. "There's nothing left for him to feel bad about."

"Don't be an idiot," Yuu snapped. "All that's left for him is the past. He can't find you here. He lives where he did the things to you that make him hate himself."

"There's no need," Taichi said. "It's been a long time."

"Well, for better or worse, don't think that matters to him," Yuu said.

Taichi moved under the mountain that had fallen on him. First the medical consultation, now Arata's despairing refusal to release himself and Taichi from the past. Taichi followed Yuu into the old, comfortable, woody kitchen and accepted her offer of a bottle of spring water. He drank it quickly, realizing that his mouth had turned to sand. She gave him another, and he drank that too.

How did this start? Taichi asked himself. Why did I come here? Was I imagining things? Was I asked here for a friendly visit or did they tell me I'd have to deal with Arata's steady march toward a stroke like the one that took out his grandfather? Was I hallucinating why I came here? Did I put together this trip for fun?

I can't stay here, Taichi thought. I have to leave right now.

Outside, the air was crisp and fresh in the wake of the storm. The wind had died down and a sense of calm enveloped Taichi as he took a series of small steps to the car. He paused, looked back at Arata's house, got in the car, and leaned back in the seat. Damn, he thought. I need to get things in order.

Taichi looked up as a pair of headlights appeared and approached the house, beams sweeping the trees. Who is it, he thought. I thought I was the only one staying here. But why did I think that? A small Mitsubishi sedan swung into view and parked on the other side of the driveway. Taichi instinctively slumped down, watching the other car. He narrowed his eyes as he watched the driver climb out and walk toward the house. Stunned, finding it difficult to breathe, unable to put things together into recognizable shape, he studied Chihaya as she stood at the door.

Chihaya smiled and said hello to someone inside and went in. Taichi started the car and drove it quickly out to the road, then headed south toward Kyoto. He rolled down his window and let the cool air whip through his hair and wake up his worn-down eyes. What did I just see, he thought. Did Arata tell Chihaya I was going to be there, and she drove up from Kyoto at night to ambush me? I can't take these people much longer. Where will I go? He stared at the road as it unwound in the headlights. The trip doesn't have the right end, right now. Is there a place I can go? Who do I know in Kyoto? Where do I go?

Taichi drove steadily through the dark, eyes on the road, mind set to the task of escaping from his former friends. Fatigue began to descend on him, settling everywhere. Taichi knew that he had to stop or he was going to crash the car.

Finally, he lay back sleeping in the space between the driver seat and window, the collar and hood of his coat pulled up to his throat. He had parked behind an innocuous business strip development that looked abandoned. His eyelids were softly closed, his breath deep and relieved. He had a few more hours to rest before morning.

Beside him, his phone lay, screen frequently lighting up with notifications of message after message after message. The volume was off. Taichi had no intention of answering anyone.

*

Taichi woke to glare pouring in through the windshield. Morning was irradiating the car. A shimmering mirage floated above the dashboard, the result of sunlight refracting through glass. Or maybe, he thought, it's actually the result of my being seriously messed up. Even if I hallucinate, I have to keep going.

Taichi was hungry. He drank a third of a bottle of water that had been sitting in in a cup holder since he left on the trip yesterday and ate a packet of sesame seaweed rice crackers that had spilled in a fan across the bottom of the console. It would have to do. Then, he walked a couple of meters down the slope across the road and relieved himself. He noticed a little stream, a few meters away, which had been piped beneath the road and was now descending toward the unseen sea below him. It was clear, running through a switching channel, making crisp laughing sounds. Early spring wildflowers grew alongside it, purple and yellow petals newly emerged from the bud. I don't think any of the cards mention this kind of stream, he thought. Rivers, sure, but little streams like this? Surely it was possible to watch one of these flow downhill and find something to say about love. Perhaps a poem could describe the clear downward course of a small love, its quickness and its laughter.

Taichi went back to the car, grabbed his phone off the front passenger seat, and dictated a call. No one answered at first, and he was about to ring off when a quiet, flatly sarcastic voice came through. "Taichi. How good to hear from you. What a pleasure so early in the morning."

Taichi grinned. "I needed to hear your microscopic voice."

Suou softly snorted. "So what is the occasion?"

"Do you know any places to eat in Kyoto? I'm driving there in a while."

Suou was silent for what seemed like a full minute. Taichi was used to that, so he hung on. Suou finally spoke, with a pitying tone. "Taichi, I live in Kyoto."

Taichi laughed. "No way! I only see you in Tokyo."

"Taichi, just because you only see me in Tokyo does not mean I live in Tokyo. I am here in Kyoto, headmaster of a preparatory school, in close proximity to my reluctant friend Wakamiya Shinobu, who has had to put up with me for quite a while. Come by the house and we can have breakfast." Suou slowly gave the street and street number, which Taichi put into temporary mental storage for the GPS unit in his phone.

Wow, Taichi thought when they rang off. Suou is just an hour or so away. He climbed into the car, his new home, and drove south. Chihaya would almost certainly not find him at Suou's place, but he wouldn't bet on that. So far, she had never failed to find him when her mind was set on it. She was not one to let go easily.

On the way to Suou's place, on a little side street lined with traditional boutiques and specialty shops, Taichi bought a gift for his friend. He was holding it when Suou answered the loud knock, only to see Taichi hunched over in imitation of an anxious supplicant. Suou stared at him without speaking. Taichi handed him the present, elegant dark green box.

"It's very fine black tea," Taichi said, stepping past Suou into the house.

"Why did you bring this to me?" Suou asked cautiously.

"I figured that if it woke you up, you would talk louder."

Suou smiled visibly and gestured toward the house's interior. "Go take a shower, right now. You look like a cockroach having a bad day. I'll get your suitcase or whatever you're carrying your life in these days."

Taichi stopped and scratched his head. "Why are you getting my stuff?"

"Because," Suou said, "you can't be trusted to make your way through the world right now, at least without supervision. You're staying here tonight. I'm serious, take a shower. I'll put your things in the spare bedroom and make breakfast."

Suou was right, as he almost always was. A glimpse in the mirror revealed an unshaved man with recessed eyes and greenish skin and hair that either stuck out like the bristles of an overused toothbrush or lay down unnaturally in greasy clumps. Taichi shuddered and stepped into the shower. The hot water scoured away two days of low-level anxiety that had covered him like a coat of dead skin. When he stepped out, he toweled off and put on the clothes Suou had left there with the toiletry pouch containing Taichi's toothbrush and toothpaste, comb, razor, and deodorant. Taichi went through the motions of dressing and preparing himself for society, and stepped out into the prevalent coolness of Suou's house.

The whole place reflected a balance between daylight filtering through windows and shadows pooling out of sight. Suou's eyesight had been rapidly deteriorating in the past couple of years; this control of lighting was the signature both of his disability and of his tendency to find and implement elegant, clever solutions for virtually every problem. Taichi smiled about his own thoughts. He no longer idolized Suou, but he hadn't migrated far from that state. He didn't know what he would do without his friend and sensei. It was not something he wanted to think about, but it was far easier to think about than of Suou's reality, of eyes closing forever as their iris blades folded in around the aperture, eliminating the precious camera by which Suou visualized and recorded his life. When sight was gone, Suou's hearing would have to do until even that fell apart and the less insightful senses took over.

A wonderful fragrance of freshly made food increased as Taichi wandered around looking for the dining room. He finally found Suou sitting at a small table in a breakfast nook set apart from the workspace of the kitchen. The table was set with utensils and cups filled with steaming reddish tea, probably the tribute he had brought Suou a while ago. Taichi sat down across from Suou and looked down at a steaming bowl that had been waiting for him.

"Oyakodon," Suou informed him. "No mere oyakadon. My oyakadon."

Taichi laughed, picked up his chopsticks, and set to eating without saying thanks or waiting for his friend. It was extraordinary. Suou had always been a good cook, a skill that he had employed with fellow karuta players in order to seduce or direct them to his purposes. But this oyakodon was transcendent. I've been on a food tour, Taichi suddenly realized. Even if I keep running into people I don't want to see and learning things I don't want to learn, as long as I'm eating exceptional food everything will be worthwhile. It's all so simple. I just have to keep eating!

The used bowls and cups and utensils had long since been cleared away and replaced by cups of freshly ground coffee. Suou studied Taichi as Taichi leaned on the table, across from him. This was the Taichi who grew close to him after first breaking with Chihaya and the familiar world that had grown painful to him, Suou realized. Thirty years had taken almost no toll on Taichi's absurdly handsome face, serious demeanor, and frequently indecipherable personality.

"Let me get this straight," Suou said. "You are running away from your friends, who are working overtime trying to stay close to you."

That sounded pretty bad, Taichi admitted to himself. "I no longer consider them to be my friends," he said without bitterness. "Our friendship ran out of fuel a few years ago and it's taken me a while to stop trying to replace it."

Suou leaned forward. "I need you to understand how offensive you are being, though I know you well enough to know you mean no offence. I have exactly two friends in this world, you and Shinobu. I don't even know all the people you know, but I can count ten of your friends just off the top of my head. Two for me, ten for you. So you need to convince me that it's okay to throw any friends away, even if they make you wish you'd never met them."

Ah, Taichi groaned somewhere in his mind, shifting beneath justifications and habits he had accumulated for the purpose of cutting Chihaya and Arata loose.

"What about just one of them?" he asked. "I'll keep Chihaya. You can have Arata."

Suou laughed. "Your negotiating powers have grown. But I don't want to have Arata as a friend. I don't like him. I don't even admire or respect him. So that won't work."

Taichi leaned back and closed his eyes. "So if I cut him loose he would be left with Chihaya, Shinobu, and some people he grew up with. That's not a bad fate, though. He has an incredible wife. I can't help but wonder whether he married her under false pretenses. In fact, to be honest, that annoys the hell out of me."

"I'm not surprised that you feel that way," Suou said. "Your life, after all, is an irreparable mess."

Taichi growled, picked up his half-full cup, stood up, and leaned over to mime pouring coffee onto his friend. He sat down. He drank the rest of the coffee. He put his face in his hands. He had plenty of unplanned time ahead of him today, and that was something to be happy about.

"What is your objection to Chihaya?" Suou asked. "Is it just that you're tired of wanting to have sex with her after what might as well been a lifetime?"

Taichi grinned at him. "You can't piss me off, you asshole. To tell you the truth, right now I'd rather drop an anvil on my foot than go to bed with Chihaya."

"Not sleeping with her still makes you want to jump out of your skin, though, you must admit."

Taichi glared at his friend's evil half-smile.

"Sex aside, why do you object to Arata?"

"Suou, I shouldn't even have to say. We've pretended to be friends since we both fell in love with a woman who insisted that we get along. Then we tormented each other for years with jealousy and fear and quiet undiluted hatred. Then we spent twelve years pretending that none of that mattered, because we wanted to honor the wreckage stapled to our guts. We've never been friends."

"Yet you went out of your way to visit him, and agreed to help him get past the terror of becoming demented and dying from strokes due to an inherited disease from the grandfather he worshipped." Suou wound up that incredible sentence as Taichi's jaw hung down in awe.

"I don't want him to die," Taichi said. "I don't want to widow his wife and leave his children fatherless. I don't want him to die. I just want to be in peace and not have to care whether he's alive."

"So really," Suou said just short of a whisper, "what you hate is how you feel. Not those people, not really even the harm done in the past. You don't talk about that. What is killing you is how you feel. That's a decent reason to evade and set aside friends, I suppose. But I'll murder you with my bare hands if you do that to me."

Taichi drove up to the parking area past the front gate and just shy of Shinobu's house, a wide traditional building that stretched the length of any two houses he knew. Then he turned into a sheltered area and parked. Suou sat beside him, impassive. Taichi lay back in his seat and stared at the ceiling.

"You're going to have to go in there," Suou said, "and you're probably going to have to deal with Chihaya at some point this afternoon. She undoubtedly knows you're in the vicinity and she's staying here for a week as she does every year."

"Who is going to be here?" Taichi asked.

"Shinobu, Sakurazawa, maybe Sudou, maybe Arata, maybe someone else. Since Shinobu got better, everyone is putting their heads together to visualize what a professional karuta world would look like, its constituency and audience, its marketing demands and all that. She's been playing again now for about four years. Chihaya brought her back to the game when she visited Shinobu at the hospital. She's been playing Chihaya, mainly, but has recently been branching out as she's gotten back a lot of what she's lost."

Taichi sat staring through the windshield into a grove of cherry trees, not speaking.

"Taichi, you're not leaving me here today," Suou said. "You have to deal with these things at some point, and I really don't want to hit someone else up for a ride."

"Okay," Taichi said, and got out of the car. Suou did the same and they walked to the front door. The door opened before they were able to announce themselves, and Shinobu's mother was standing looking up at them.

"Hello," she said pleasantly, "please come in." She led them to an empty room like the one Arata had in his house, except that there wasn't a picture of anyone's grandfather there. A wall-to-wall expanse of tatami mats someone announced the seriousness of the place, but a lot of laughter was coming from a low table around which sat Shinobu, Sakurazawa Midori, and a skinny man with glasses in white shirt and black tie. Taichi didn't know the man. Sakurazawa smiled at Taichi and waved in her blindingly beautiful supernaturally sexy way. Even Shinobu seemed glad to see him, though they had only merely gotten along. The reason for Shinobu's welcome soon became clear.

To Taichi's great surprise, Suou sat down next to Shinobu, close enough for their arms to touch. His face betrayed nothing, but hers did. She looked at Suou with a loud medley of mockery, bemusement, admiration, and lust. Wow, Taichi thought. I had no idea. This alone was worth the price of admission, but he couldn't quite comprehend what it meant.

Taichi sat next to Sakurazawa and she turned toward him. "Hello, Taichi," she said. "It's been a very long time, hasn't it."

He nodded. "I saw you eight years ago at a tournament, I think. Are you still coaching?"

"Believe it or not," she said, "I am." She smoothed the cloth on one of her thighs. "Getting old is not as professionally disabling as I feared."

Taichi smiled. "You have enough teaching left in you to count for two lifetimes at least." And you're really hot.

"Pleasantries aside," Shinobu said, eyes narrowing in the evil way he knew so well, "you are in some very serious trouble."

"I know," Taichi said. "Is she on her way right now?"

"She is," Shinobu said, "along with another old friend of yours. This time, you'll be spared a very unhappy wife whose husband's friend was supposed to stay over last night."

Taichi closed his eyes and briskly rubbed his forehead with the heels of his palms. "What terrible karma led me to know so many difficult people? Except for Arata's wife, she's great."

"Because they love you, that's why," Sakurazawa said. "Oh, here comes Rion and Makoto and their gang of child hoodlums."

Taichi turned to watch as Yamashiro Rion and Yamai Makoto herded a bunch of kids into team formations. The kids were all late elementary and middle school, from what he could tell, and they were all excited. Rion noticed Taichi and waved as she went to get the cards for the team matches. He waved back. Makoto looked over to him as well and nodded briefly in his direction. Taichi nodded back.

Taichi turned to Sakurazawa. "Are those two…"

"Yes," she said. "They finally wore down each others' resistances to the point of no return. They got married six years ago."

I'm glad, Taichi thought. He'd never particularly liked Makoto, but the guy had been, like Taichi, a perpetual sufferer of hopeless longing, and it hurt Taichi to see Makoto advancing toward and retreating from Rion, time after time again. He didn't know how Rion and Makoto had done in the karuta world after he left it, but they certainly looked happy and fond of children and ready to pass the game on.

Taichi's ears caught the thin recorded recitations of the cards and the silence of the kid players as they stared at the floor. A kind of happy pain skewered him as he listened to the familiar nasal intonation of reading, followed each time by the timeless echoing percussion of card takes. He did miss it, but the loss to Arata in their confrontation to become Suou's challenger had sucked the joy out of him like a pipe. He had pretended to be okay with it, remaining in competition as long as he could until he walked away in his twentieth year and did not come back. That had been his final and most brutal lesson about karuta and its establishment. Arata's erratic and dishonest performance, followed by his brilliant series of takes in the last match, was immediately elevated to dynastic legend, and Taichi's clean and skillful but unsuccessful game banished him to the realm of the unchosen. It took years to realize that when a world is not yours, it is not your world, just as if a woman doesn't want to be your lover, it makes no sense to want to be hers. Chihaya had entered an orbit around another star when that loss happened, although she remained sweet and loving. It was over by then, though, and he remembered the enormous relief of not having to play or think about playing again.

What he discovered, in the undergraduate pre-med program he joined, was that he had a huge natural talent for original and applied medical research. Before he knew it, as he immersed himself in the study of neurotoxicity, he was the nominal co-author of well-received journal articles on the neurological impact of environmental heavy metals and a paid consultant in those matters, even as he crawled his way through medical school. This was a problem, in the end, because he was so wound up in the neurological research that he was way too slowy passing all the requirements it took to become a neurologist. His internship and the following residency would finally begin next term, which would occlude a lot of the research, but he wanted to be a doctor and it was time to do it. He wanted to help people whose own brains were threatening them, people like Arata.

Taichi swallowed hard as that thought registered.

Suddenly, both Taichi and the salaryman-looking man at the table surfaced into awareness of each other. They introduced themselves and the man went back to work on a tiny laptop, moving things around on overlapping spreadsheets. Sakurazawa gabbed with Shinobu about market demographics, drawing from knowledge gained with her college business degree. Suou was quietly, happily fusing with Shinobu, and she let him.

This is good, Taichi reflected, looking around him at the different activities as contentment suffused his worn way of looking at things, for at least one sweet moment. This is what the world should be. This is all I really want.

Seemingly on cue, Chihaya came through the door, her eyes immediately locking onto his. Arata followed her, avoiding Taichi's gaze, and crossed over to talk with Rion and Makoto and help with instructing the kids. Chihaya crossed the floor toward Taichi with an implacable stride, stood over him staring at him, and sat down beside him without saying a word.

Sakurazawa and Shinobu both waited eagerly for the warfare, Shinobu openly and Sakurazawa tactfully so, but Chihaya did not oblige. She simply sat beside Taichi, listened to the other two women, and discussed what they were discussing.

Taichi could not deny it. Chihaya had changed. Her wild enthusiasm so much like idiocy, always guaranteed to blow up his life, was entirely gone. After she began teaching physical education at a Chiba high school and sponsoring a karuta club there, a completely unexpected transformation occurred. She became serious, anchored down, openly intelligent, patient, and devoid of the evasiveness that had always driven Taichi crazy. Her hair, cut slightly shorter now, usually gathered back in a ponytail that accentuated the ravishing beauty of her eyes, cheekbones, and mouth. She dressed differently than she did even a year ago. At this moment, she wore a soft brown matching cashmere shirt and long sweater, combined with a teal pleated Scottish wool skirt with a hemline that grazed her knees. The thing was, Taichi thought, it really didn't matter. She just kept getting more beautiful, more enchanting, making him more and more of a fool. How could he be around her?

Suou's words rang in him. This was all about his feelings, not the people he was trying to escape. He had never been able to rest easy with his feelings. Since childhood, even when he was the mean little jerk who hid Arata's glasses, he had been an emotional seismograph.

Taichi felt a sudden urge to walk around, maybe ask someone in the house for something to drink. As he was standing up, a hand with an iron grip closed around his calf.

"No," Chihaya said, not looking at his eyes. "I will not let you leave my side. I can't trust you to come back."

Taichi said, "Okay, I'll come back. I just need to find something to drink."

Chihaya looked him in the eye and stood up, as well. "I'm going with you, then. You are not leaving my side. You may think you can, but you can't. I'll find you wherever you go and make you stay at my side again. This is not a request."

She stood beside him, close, looking down at the people in the table, all of whom were blatantly staring at her.

"Shinobu," she said, "I'll be back in a minute." She glared at Taichi. "With this guy."

Suou loudly muttered, "And you thought she bossed you around before."

Taichi could either seriously resist being in custody or let it happen. Chihaya was hurt, he could tell. He'd seen it before, when she was humiliated at home or at tournaments, her sense of being personally punished. So he let the custody happen. When they went into the kitchen, he stuck with her and raised his eyebrows when her eyes would dart toward him. When he went into the bathroom, he tolerated her tapping foot right outside the door. When they joined the others, he put up with the open grins of ridicule from Shinobu and the quiet sarcasm of Suou and the calm bemusement of Sakurazawa. Because Chihaya would not let him move an inch more than necessary away from her.

"How long will you be in town, Taichi?" Shinobu asked. Her eyes were green with malice.

"I'm staying with Suou tonight and leaving in the morning," Taichi said.

"No you are not," Chihaya said. "You're staying with me here, tonight, and taking me home with you."

"But…"

"I cannot trust you not to leave me."

The humor had left the atmosphere; Chihaya's words were finally landing with their full emotional weight. Taichi turned to her. "Chihaya…"

"Why did you drive away when you saw me last night?" Chihaya asked coldly.

"Arata…"

"I don't care about Arata!" Chihaya said fiercely. "I'm not talking about Arata. I wanted to spend some overnight time and the morning with you. I've missed you. Do you hate me?"

The table and the people who sat at it were frozen in profound embarrassment, but Chihaya did not care.

"Of course I don't hate you, Chihaya. I just have to see you and not have you at the same time." Taichi's voice rose as anger rose in his throat. "That started when Arata beat me, remember?"

"I…" Chihaya looked at the ceiling.

"Is it that hard for you to remember what happened and why I'm tired of seeing the people who made it happen? Come on, Chihaya, did I ever give you reason to believe I was such an idiot that I didn't know what you were doing?"

The room was heading toward dead quiet. This was something people never heard in public and did not want to start hearing now.

"Taichi…" Chihaya closed her eyes. "Do you want to know what Arata and I did all that time together?"

"No I don't!" Taichi shouted. "Why would I want to know?"

"All we did was avoid talking about you," she said. "Nothing else quite got done. We couldn't talk about you, so all we did, every hour, every day, every year, was avoid talking about you."

"Why do you want… What do you want?"

"I want you to let me know what you need, and how I can give it to you," she said. "I want you to want us to be together, and I don't want you to leave me. If I can't have those things, I want you to help me stop loving you. I've never known what this love is or how to make it happen. I love you, I love you, I know I've never said it but I do. But every time I get near enough to tell you that, to talk about it, you leave and won't let me find you."

With that, Chihaya stood up, wheeled around, and walked away and through the door. Taichi could not speak or move.

"Hey," Sakurazawa said. "Hey, Taichi. Didn't she tell you you weren't allowed to leave her side?"

Taichi rose and walked after Chihaya. As he left the room, passing by mortified people, he saw Arata against a far wall. Arata's eyes were cast down as he stood, cast into a desolation at least partly of his making. As are mine, Taichi thought. I don't know how to undo a single thing I have done wrong in the past, and it's cruel to demand it of him.

Chihaya was standing between the house and the front gate, looking away into the trees. Taichi walked through the front door and toward her, slowly enough for her to prepare herself.

"Chihaya," he said, addressing her back. "I also want us to walk beside each other and work things out that way. Let's walk back together. I'm not going anywhere, I'm yours. I always have been. Whatever our love is, whether or not we understand it, we'll do it together."

Chihaya turned and walked toward him, smiling shyly. He reached out and she took his hand. Their fingers interlaced and closed tightly together. Holding hands, drawn close, Taichi and Chihaya went back to the room where their friends, their traveling companions along the mysterious roads of karuta, waited.

Everyone was nervous when they entered, but they were welcomed warmly. Shinobu got up and walked to Chihaya and embraced her, cradling Chihaya's face against her shoulder.

Taichi walked slowly across the tatami floor to a man who was staring at it intently.

"Hey, Arata," Taichi said.

Arata looked up, cautious but happy to be addressed.

Taichi smiled. "Let's play cards."

*

Midnight in the Wakamiya house, in the silent guest bedroom with moonlight pouring in. Two naked bodies, sinuous but finally at rest, wound together on a futon, covered partially by a duvet decorated with ornate images of crimson flowers.

The voyage out has begun, the ship already over the curve of the world.

A beautiful woman with large eyes closed in liquid calm. A handsome man with his head as near as possible to the woman's, vaguely smiling.

And blazing light making fallen autumn leaves flash bright red on a river's waters.

*

Taichi and Arata walked a short distance behind their wives, each of whom held hands with a toddler as they walked the path through a wild park near Kyoto. Yuu and Chihaya were talking seriously about something, but both Arata and Taichi knew that they did not want to know what was being said.

Taichi asked, "How do you feel about your rehab up to now? They've put you through a long course. Are you just checking in every week or two?"

Arata nodded. "My neurosurgeon said that the equilibrium problem I had before is probably permanent; something seems to have died. I do feel something missing, sometimes. But it's not enough of a problem for me not to play."

Taichi nodded. "Now you don't have to fear following your grandfather and leaving your children and Yuu behind."

Arata nodded, smiling. "That's all that matters to me."

Taichi looked down into the valley along which they were walking. Another spring was rising from the winter trees and dormant grasses. Soon the hard buds would split open and the leaves and blossoms would leap into the light. The grasses would decide it was safe and emerge from their roots and become green.

The cumulus clouds above them seemed to weave in and out of each other. When closely viewed, they passed through each other. That was the very image of love. The passing, the passing through...those are the chances that lovers have to take.

Taichi tried to call up an image of his favorite card, the card of reunion, the splitting and remerging river. When he closed his eyes, the image came together. When he opened them, the image dissolved against the living image of his wife walking their child.

I'll take it, he thought.

I'll stay by their sides as long as I can, for any slice of forever.

END


End file.
